
Glass J3 ?JM_ 
Book 0> O 



A PARADISE IN 
PORTUGAL 



BY 



MARK SALE 



NEW YORK 

THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY 

LONDON: ANDREW MELROSE 

1911 



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PRINTED BY 

HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, I.D., 

LONDON AND AYLESBURY, 

ENGLAND. 



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THE PHILOSOPHER, 

IN ALL HONOUR AND ESTEEM. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



I. How WE Found our " Wal- 



II. 
III. 
IV. 

V. 

VI. 

VII. 

VIII. 

IX. 

X. 

XI. 

XII. 



DEN " . . . . . 


I 


Our Neighbours 


11 


Our Surroundings . 


23 


Ourselves and our Food 


35 


Domesticities . 


. 46 


One of our Sundays 


53 


Young Portugal 


64 


Summer Time 


. 73 


Birthday Egotisms . 


. 86 


The Post Office Baby . 


. 101 


SiCK-RooM Solace . 


. 106 


On the Shore 


. 114 



VI 1 



viii 


conte:nts 


PAQK 


XIII. 


Summer Incidents . 


. 122 


XIV. 


QuiET Days 


. 129 


XV. 


The Eternal Feminine . 


. 136 


XVI. 


Autumn .... 


. 149 


XVII. 


Christmas 


. 158 


XVIII. 


Farewell 


. 167 



A SHADOWED 
PARADISE 



CHAPTER I 



HOW WE FOUND OUR " WALDEN " 



" For to admire and for to see, 
For to be'old this world so wide. 
It never done no good to me. 
But I can't drop it if I tried." 

We were always as poor as the proverbial 
church mouse, but Kipling's immortal lines 
fitly express the spirit in which we have directed 
our lives. 

When The Philosopher and I first became 
comrades, he said : " There are just two sorts 
of people in the world, you know — the people 
who make money and the people who spend 
what the others have made. Both health and 
temperament cause me to belong to the latter 
class, my dear." 

1 



2 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

As I understood him, and as I cared very 
much for him, I was not so shocked as perhaps 
I ought to have been at this admission ; and 
I then and there agreed to join him in this 
reprehensible mode of life, rather than condemn 
him to a desk in some stuffy London office for 
the purpose of keeping up "an establishment " 
and a bank balance. 

The youngest of his family, born when his 
father was dying of consumption, he had in- 
herited a measure of " unhealth " and insomnia 
which in a less sweet and philosophical dis- 
position would have degenerated into chronic 
invalidism ; but which, in his case, in spite of 
a wrecked career, was faced with resolute pluck 
and an unfailing effort to " make the best of 
a bad job." Freedom, sunshine, and fresh air 
were the necessities of life to him, but all our 
other requirements were as modest, and our 
happiness was easily perfected. We were con- 
tent in each other's society ; our daily needs 
were of the simplest ; and for occupation. The 
Philosopher painted, while I wrote humble 
little stories. So it came about that we 
tramped this grand old world, viewing its 
wonders, and sunning ourselves under its 
brightest, bluest skies, with a yearly income 
upon which most people would have been 



HOW WE FOUND OUR " WALDEN " 3 

stagnating in genteel poverty in some dull 
suburb or lifeless village of the dear, but grey, 
homeland. 

Thus we wandered happily in many lands, 
through long, scented summer days, and brief 
winter brightness and warmth, doing no harm 
to our fellows, if but little good. Even positive 
good, perhaps, if the sight of simple happiness 
and content, pleasant comradeship and bright 
faces, can count as any good in a world where 
so many folks are sick and sorry, and some — 
soured, narrow, and discontented. 

Until, at last, one dark day, the frail little 
ship of our fortunes foundered and went down. 
It is a tale too often told : philosophers are 
not the metal out of which successful specula- 
tors are made. A series of investments failing 
in their promise of certain dividends, a plausi- 
ble business friend, a prospect of doubling, nay, 
trebhng, our little remaining capital — any 
reader, smiling a compassionate, superior smile, 
can outline the sequel — and we were left face 
to face with a grim guest whom we had never 
entertained before. A guest who greeted our 
morning waking, who sat down to meat with 
us, who followed us into the streets and the 
woods, who lurked by our fireside in the twi- 
light, who intruded himself between us and 



4 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

the pages of our book, and who would scarce 
permit us to sleep at night for his persistent 
company. 

But if philosophers make but a sorry fight 
in the scramble for riches, they can at any 
rate show how adversity is to be met- — with an 
unruffled serenity, head erect, unrepining, still 
master of one's fate, whatever comes. Other- 
wise, of what profit have been the long, deep 
thoughts of leisured days, the solemn lessons 
of the stars, the realisation of those better 
things which shall not be taken away ? So we 
smiled undauntedly in the face of Ruin, and 
The Philosopher, figuring on a stray scrap of 
paper, formed a brave plan to elude his un- 
welcome presence and to cheat him of his prey. 

" We can live for a couple of years, if we 
do as I suggest," he decided at length. 

" And in that time who knows what may 
not turn up ! " cried I, with the confidence of 
sparrows, lilies, and other inconsequent things. 

So we held a grand consultation. The 
Philosopher's health made living in England 
an impossibility. Sunshine was our first neces- 
sity ; next, a place where the cost of living 
could be reduced to the lowest figure recon- 
cilable with bodily well-being, and where we 
could continue to enjoy that spiritual tran- 



HOW WE FOUND OUR "WALDEN" 5 

quillity which is more to be desired than great 
riches. 

Where should we go ? The Riviera was out 
of the question ; both rent and service there 
would be prohibitive. Other parts of France ? 
Switzerland ? The winters would be impossi- 
ble, for we could not afford the necessary fuel 
and other comforts. Italy ? The summers 
would be insupportably hot. The Philosopher 
had a knowledge of Italian, Spanish, and some 
Portuguese — all kindred languages. The coast 
of Spain held first place in our inclinations for 
some days, when we chanced to meet a young 
Portuguese whose account of the seaboard of 
his country charmed our imaginations. Once 
off the track of the escorted tourist it was but 
little known ; the climate excelled that of the 
Riviera in winter, in summer its heat was 
tempered by the cool Atlantic breezes ; the 
people were simple and kindly, and more well- 
disposed to English folk than were those of 
its haughtier neighbour ; the currency was 
low, and service was cheap. If what we re- 
quired was a good climate and primitive living, 
if we did not aspire to bring the conditions of 
London life to a country some hundreds of years 
in the rear, as so many English people did, then 
we might surely be very happy in his country. 



6 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

So it chanced that we took ship and came 
to Portugal. 

A most fair land ! A land of pines and oaks 
and eucalyptus ; of an infinite wealth of bracken, 
golden gorse, and purple heather ; of tiny 
fields of tall, green, ribbony maize ; of lowly 
homesteads, nestling in the very heart of 
nature ; of gorges, of streamlets, and crags of 
warm red earth, where mica glitters amongst 
the stones. Small wonder was it that the 
classic Romans, coming upon it in all its 
virginity, were charmed with its luxuriant 
beauty and its soft temperateness of climate 
compared with the greater extremes of their 
own country, and, wandering in its pine-scented 
forests, or resting on its green, sunlit slopes, 
felt that here at last, on the verge of the ocean, 
they had indeed found the Elysian Fields. 

And here, after a little searching, we happed 
upon our Portuguese " Walden," with no less 
thing than the blue Atlantic for our lake. We 
have rented the annex to a farm : a square- 
built, whitewashed little house, with a corru- 
gated, red-tiled roof, two big windows facing the 
west and the ocean, and a little north window 
which is our salvation in the hot weather. 



HOW WE FOUND OUR " WALDEN " 7 

The living rooms are all upstairs ; below, lit 
by two tiny slits of windows, is a great ce- 
mented room, which we use as a receptacle 
for our trunks and bicycles. The entrance to 
our quarters is at the back of the house, in the 
courtyard of the farm, and up a broad flight 
of stone steps. So, to the outer world, we 
present an inhospitable front of simply two 
big windows on high and two wide slits be- 
neath ; and when the huge iron-cased doors 
of the courtyard are locked for the night, we, 
within our thick walls, seem prepared to with- 
stand a siege. All the quarters of the family 
of peasants who run the farm have doors 
opening on the interior of the courtyard ; 
thus, when the great farm doors are closed 
we are practically impregnable ; there is no 
entrance to be gained by legitimate means, 
and for others — ^there is the dog. 

These precautions in a land where the people 
are gentle, law-abiding, and honest, must date 
from centuries ago ; probably from the classic 
Roman period, and, later, the days of the 
Moorish occupation. Indeed, the arrangement 
is suggestive of the East ; for this is a country 
where things are slow to change, and many of 
the old customs linger on delightfully. 

Our little place used to be inhabited by the 



8 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

padre, and, as an enthusiastic house-agent 
would say, " its decorations are superior." 
The centre of the ceiling of our square white 
sola is ornamented by four most unspiritual 
plaster cherubs, with bright red puffy cheeks 
and blue and vermilion wings ; and the padre 
has left a wooden hanging crucifix, which I 
cherish but do not worship. 

The spotless boards are bare of carpet, and 
our chairs and tables are of plain white pine- 
wood, as befits a couple of philosophers who 
aspire to emulate the simplicity of Horace on 
his Sabine farm, and, like him, to cultivate 
the virtues of " plain living and high thinking." 
The Philosopher's paintings and our books 
overflow everywhere, and there are white vases 
for the never-failing flowers, but of ornaments 
in the conventional sense there are none. For 
would not I have to dust them ? And have I 
come to this most blessed land for that ? — to 
waste the beautiful, long, leisured days on 
unnecessary household work, — a Sisyphus task, 
and unprofitable to the soul. My Philosopher 
has taught me better things. So, with the 
assistance of a pretty little rapariga, my clean- 
ing and dinner preparations are done in two 
brief morning hours, and then I am off to join 
him on the sunny, salt-sprayed shore, or 



HOW WE FOUND OUR "WALDEN" 9 

amongst the green, shady windings of our 
Happy Valley. 

For all this delightful little place, with no 
rates or taxes, and with about a quarter of an 
acre of field for a garden, we pay the yearly 
rental of 25,000 reis ! It sounds an appalling 
sum for paupers such as we are, until one finds 
that it is an equivalent to about G.ve English 
pounds. The people of this land are many of 
them poor to an extent that is rarely known 
at home, and it seems to make them feel richer 
to count their money in such infinitesimal 
coins. A beggar will pour forth a string of 
fervent blessings should you bestow upon him 
the sum for which he pleads — cinco reis — about 
one farthing. One shudders to imagine the 
vivid language and scornful regard of a beggar 
in the Strand to whom one should dare to 
offer such an indignity. 

Poverty here is accepted with a cheerful 
stoicism, as the natural and inevitable thing ; 
no one is ashamed of rags or patches. A few 
beans, floating in a thin mess of maize-meal, 
or a chunk of heavy, unfermented maize-bread, 
forms a sufficient meal ; and, for the rest — 
well, does not the sun shine ? And on this 
meagre diet the women tramp for miles in the 
dawn to market, with their particular little 



10 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

bits of produce, which can only bring them 
a few pitiful pence in return. 

In the market of our nearest big town I 
one day chanced upon an old, old ivoman — old 
beyond all memory of youth — ^hunched up in 
her place in the line of women squatting 
behind their baskets of fruit and vegetables. 
She was mouthing and mumbling to herself, 
while her brown, claw-like hands hovered 
anxiously over her wares — four or five tiny, 
unripe, unwholesome-looking tomatoes, not 
larger than button mushrooms, displayed for 
sale upon a broken bit of basket lid. 

At the railway terminus of this same big 
town there is a platelayer whose trousers are 
ever a joy to me. They have been patched 
up and down, front and back, with cotton and 
cloth of every colour and texture, until I am 
sure that not even he himself can point to the 
particular square which represents the original 
garment. He is a fine, stalwart, merry fellow, 
and his companions think no less of him for 
his wondrous nether coverings. Do they not 
prove his possession of an industrious, thrifty 
helpmate ? And are they not infinitely more 
self-respecting than holes ? Where all are so 
poor, fine distinctions of attire would be con- 
sidered invidious. 



CHAPTER II 

OUR NEIGHBOURS 

If any one opens this book in the expectation 
of reading an account of aristocratic life in 
Portugal, of festivities, of bull-fights, of dark- 
eyed senhoritas and of amorous adventures in 
this sunny land, I fear he will be grievously 
disappointed. The Philosopher and I have 
lived very close to the earth here, and our 
experiences are all of those who dwell upon it 
in humble huts and scrape pathetic little 
patches of its surface, existing upon its simple 
bounty. What knowledge we have of its soul 
has been gained face to face with Nature — with 
that patriarchal, gracious, rural Portugal which 
has remained practically unchanged with the 
passing of the centuries, uninfluenced by the 
feverish modern fancies of London or Paris, 
temperamentally unimitative and self-sufficing. 
To us, with our ears to the ground, come 
faint, faint vibrations, indicating a future 

11 



12 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

change of conditions. The country is stirring 
in its sleep ; the blatant call of Progress is 
penetrating even its somnolent ears. But, 
alas ! with the good time coming, with the 
awakening of energy, with much necessary 
reform and evolution, a loss of some at least 
of its old-world charm is inevitable. Its people 
will necessarily become more sophisticated, and 
their lives will lose in simplicity what they gain 
in prosperity. 

Lighter hearted, less oppressively dignified, 
and with a keener sense of humour than the 
Spaniards, the Portuguese have been termed 
" the Italians of the Peninsula." Although 
at such close quarters with their haughty, 
aristocratic neighbour, with a language con- 
fusingly similar in many of its words, there is 
really not much in common between the two 
countries ; for the virtues of this nation are 
of the hearty, easy-going, impulsive, and kindly 
bourgeoisie, in comparison with the grave, self- 
contained pride of the Spaniards. 

Certainly, amongst none other of the Latin 
races have we experienced such spontaneous 
and disinterested kindness as in Portugal ; and 
though one hears much of certain venalties 
and lack of rectitude, we have found much 
honesty amongst the people, with much good- 



OUR NEIGHBOURS 13 

heartedness and courtesy. Possibly partly 
owing to their being yet unspoiled by demora- 
lising hordes of tourists, in these particulars 
they seem to us more self-respecting, less 
grasping and " on the make " than the Italians. 
Of this we have experienced many instances. 

On one occasion, when I was ill, The Philo- 
sopher entered a small shop to buy a bottle 
of cognac. 

" Sin, Senhor, 1 have cognac, but it is not 
of the best quality. Senhor X, lower down 
the street, has better," replied the proprietor, 
instead of effusively declaring that his cognac 
was the very best possible, and none so good 
to be obtained anywhere else in the town. 

When we were fresh to Portugal, and still 
seeking our " Walden," in the course of our 
wanderings we put up for a few days at a small 
country hotel whilst we inspected the neigh- 
bourhood. Not finding anything to suit us 
we were preparing to leave, when our host 
said : "If the Senhor is thinking of going to 

D , I should be delighted to give him a 

letter to my brother-in-law, who lives there. 
He may be of service to the Senhor.''^ A 
kindly offer, which of course was gratefully 
accepted. Upon The Philosopher presenting 
the letter of introduction to the brother-in-law, 



14 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

that good man devoted a day from his business 
to searching the country-side, showing us all 
the tenantless houses of about the rent and 
size we needed ; and when, under his guidance, 
we saw and decided upon this little place, but 
found there would be an unavoidable delay, as 
we could not take possession whilst the neces- 
sary painting and white-washing was in pro- 
gress, he insisted upon our accepting the loan 
of a furnished, unoccupied house of his own, 
and would take no refusal, nor any payment 
for the use of it. 

As for our landlord, he began by spending 
a large portion of the first year's modest rent 
in making us comfortable and adding con- 
veniences ; and he now comes periodically to 
visit us, with his honest red face all one broad, 
good-natured smile, and sits chatting with The 
Philosopher, admiring his pictures and beaming 
upon us both in the most delightful fashion. 
If we need anything and do not know the best 
means of procuring it, we have but to apply to 
him, and the difficulty vanishes ; for nothing 
appears too much trouble for him to do for us. 

I wonder whether there are many landlords 
of his type in England ? 

On the sunny blue morning when we came 



OUR NEIGHBOURS 15 

to take possession of our " Walden," we also 
must have looked truly patriarchal and of the 
country, trudging the long country road beside 
the slowly-moving ox-cart which was laden 
with our trunks and our newly bought stock 
of simple furniture. Our hearts were light as 
we neared the little square white building, 
set amongst the pines and the maize ; for there 
was to be our haven from the storms and stress 
of life ; there we were to lead the ideal life of 
simplicity and leisure, whilst we worked and 
hoped and waited for those problematical 
" better times." 

The Philosopher strode soberly along, but I 
longed to sing, and my eager feet could scarcely 
be content to make such leisurely progress, for 
I was all impatience to be there, to set my 
modest kingdom in order — to begin 

Suddenly wild cries came from the pine- 
woods, excited voices nearer us echoed them. 
But a moment before we and Miguel and his 
ox-cart had seemed to have the world to our- 
selves ; now, from here, there, and everywhere 
— ^from the maize-fields, the washing-place, and 
the mills — the peasantry came running, and 
all taking up the cry, '' Ladrdo ! Ladrdo ! ^^ 
Miguel at once desisted from his labour of 
urging on his drowsy team of oxen, and 



16 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

leaving them and us standing stranded in 
the road, rushed off after the others into the 
wood. 

"What can it be ? " I cried to The Philoso- 
pher. "Is it a revolution ? " 

" Well," responded he, with mock gravity, 
" I don't quite know. However, I think that 
' ladrdo ' means ' thief.' Let's come and see." 
And the oxen having apparently improved the 
occasion by going to sleep, we also left them 
and our belongings to their fate in the road 
and scrambled up a little hill above the old 
gravel quarry beside our house, whence we 
had a view of the pine-woods behind. 

Presently, out of the green shadowy depths 
rushed a youth of fifteen or sixteen, with some 
of the men hot upon his track. He doubled, 
trying to hide amongst the gorse and ferns, 
but it was too late ; they saw him, and in 
another instant he was surrounded by a group 
of angry captors, all gesticulating and shouting 
to him at once. Then summary vengeance 
was taken upon him, and he received such a 
formidable thrashing that I was forced to 
avert my eyes. 

" Oh — I wish they wouldn't ! " I gasped ; 
" I wish they wouldn't ! " And The Philoso- 
pher, who is one of the most humane of men, 



OUR NEIGHBOURS 17 

plunged off through the bushes towards the 
scene in more energetic protest. 

Some one gave vent to a hearty chuckle 
beside me, and, turning, I beheld our landlord, 
hands in pocket, beaming approvingly upon 
the incident. 

"The rapaz has been stealing," he said, in 
response to my inquiring look. " A piece of 
bacon, I understand. I don't fancy he will 
do it again in a hurry ! The senhor is kind to 
interfere ; but indeed it is the best way, meu 
senhora—thi^ quick and wholesome punish- 
ment ; better than sending him to prison to 
sulk and get contaminated by other boys 
worse than himself." 

And when, later, I saw the gaol of our 
nearest big town, I thought so too ! 

At this same big town a certain high bridge 
spans the river which is nicknamed by some, 
" The Suicides' Bridge," it is so favourite a 
means for desperate and unhappy persons to 
seek to end their troubles. Amongst a people 
so emotional and affectionate as the Portuguese, 
these imitative suicides are principally the 
result of love which has gone awry, and many 
romantic stories are connected with them. 
One such attempt — happily with a more 

2 



18 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

fortunate ending than most of them — ^was 
curious. A young lady thought she had 
reason to beheve that her lover had jilted her, 
and, in her grief and despair, she sought the 
famous bridge and, climbing the parapet, 
jumped over. Usually, I believe, it happens 
that even should the suicide escape contact 
with the iron framework of the bridge, the 
breathlessly rapid fall from so great a height 
causes unconsciousness before the water is 
reached ; but this young lady was fortunately 
a novice at diving, and, jumping feet foremost, 
the wind caught and distended her voluminous 
skirts, balloon fashion, thus breaking her 
plunge into the water to such an extent that 
she was rescued quite unhurt. The happy 
sequel was that the remorseful lover convinced 
her of his unaltered devotion, and they were 
speedily married — ^to " live happily ever after," 
let us hope. 

In my observations of the peasantry I am 
often amused to trace how much of the Eastern 
conception of woman's place in the scheme 
of the universe survives amongst them. 
Woman is the burden carrier — a custom 
probably dating from the days when man had 
to go unencumbered and armed in vigilant 



OUR NEIGHBOURS 19 

preparedness for any chance upspringing 
foe. As it is at present, the wife — barefoot, 
lightly clad, and bearing a huge basket or 
bundle upon her head — trudges behind, whilst 
the superior male strides in front, carrying 
his beloved umbrella, and, if it is at all cold, 
carefully shrouded in a long heavy cloak or 
coat, with a monk's-hood attachment. When 
we landed from the steamer a slight, pretty 
girl, of not more than eighteen or twenty, 
carried our big, heavy cabin trunks upon her 
head from the dock to the hotel, whilst her 
man-belonging trotted empty-handed beside 
her ; and when we ventured to remonstrate, 
he grinned proudly and assured us that she 
liked it ! 

The women also work in the fields, drive the 
oxen, and share in all the men's labours when 
they are not engaged in washing clothes or 
producing babies. Under these hard con- 
ditions of life there is little or no time left 
for domestic niceties ; and, for most, home 
seems merely a shelter from the weather and 
a place in which to cook and to sleep. To 
them, cleanly surroundings and sanitation 
seem practically unknown virtues ; and 
broken or paneless windows, fires whose smoke 
has no outlet but the door or cracks between 



20 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

the tiles of the roof, and dirty living-rooms 
in which the fowls stalk about at will, are 
amongst the ordinary conditions here ; besides 
some unnamable breaches of hygiene and 
shudderingly uncleanly habits. 

jBut it must be counted to them for right- 
eousness that they do wash their clothes, if 
they neglect to wash themselves ; while for 
all their sanitary shortcomings, ignorance and 
the hard, incessant struggle for mere existence 
are principally responsible. Here, in the 
country, the wonderful pure air and the bene- 
ficent action of the sun's rays neutralises the 
evil effects, but in the big town, small-pox 
and other zymotic diseases are always more 
or less present, with occasional cases of plague ; 
and the methods of coping with these evils 
seem very inadequate to our English ideas. 
But what with vaccination and healthier 
modes of life, the English residents and visitors 
rarely fall victims to these lurking pestilences. 

Unlike the Spaniards, the Portuguese are 
generally kind and humane to animals. Many 
of the oxen are fine, sleek, well-fed beasts, 
and the fowls, goats, and pigs seem to be re- 
garded — and to regard themselves — as honoured 
members of the household. On the occasion 



OUR NEIGHBOURS 21 

of market-days at the nearest town it is a 
comical and not infrequent sight to see a 
peasant woman driving a huge porker along 
the high road with a cord attached to one of 
its hind legs, gently suggesting progress to 
it with an occasional flip from a harmless twig, 
and a rapaz or rapariga walking ahead, en- 
couraging his porcine lordship with coaxing 
cries ; both waiting from time to time whilst 
he refreshes himself with some seductive 
clump of grass in the hedgerow. 

I have seen a woman carrying home a 
young pig in the inevitable basket set upon 
her head, with its brothers under each arm be- 
sides, all squeaking vigorously in protest. And 
a brood of chickens or ducks often form a fan- 
tastic head adornment as they nod their heads 
above the basket's rim on their way to market. 

The strangest thing I ever saw one of the 
peasant women carrying was a great Singer's 
sewing machine, with its iron stand and 
treadles. I do not know what it can have 
weighed, but I fancy no man less than a Sandow 
would have cared to walk far with it perched 
upon his head ! 

The women are as a rule very good-looking. 
The younger ones — before hard work, priva- 
tion, and exposure have turned them into 



22 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

lean, wrinkled hags — are of the grand, maternal 
type ; erect, deep chested, with handsome 
faces, well-poised heads, and a direct, fearless 
outlook upon a world in which they bear 
more than a proportionate share of the burdens 
in comparison with their men. Sometimes 
I have dared to think what a benefit it would 
be for the physical improvement of the race 
if some of our effete, super-civilised young men 
could choose such women for their mates. 

Altogether, the peasant women appear of 
a finer physique than the men, who are apt 
to be squat and undersized, and, in their 
nondescript garments, with their heavy brows 
and swarthy faces, remind one fearsomely 
of some comic-opera villains. But their 
looks belie them ; for I have generally found 
them gentle, respectful, and of a truly wonder- 
ful courtesy. 

Indeed, with their light-heartedness, kind- 
liness, and natural good manners, they are 
a lovable people — if one does not seek to take 
them too seriously, or to judge them by rigid 
Northern standpoints of veracity and probity ; 
remembering the differing stages of progress 
and the subtle but very real influences of 
climate upon character. 



CHAPTER III 

OUR SURROUNDINGS 

I HAVE a slip of a sleeping-chamber ; tiny, 
white, and bare as a nun's cell ; but the view 
from its big window makes it more to be 
desired than the stateliest room in a city 
palace. 

When I open my eyes in the early morning 
I lie looking out upon a scene of such rare 
beauty that the daily return to life is ever 
a fresh joy to me, bestowing a benison upon 
the coming hours. 

Below my window stretches the little field 
of maize from which my garden plot has been 
stolen. The tender, blue-green, long ribbony 
leaves shimmer in the sunlight, stirred by a 
first faint promise of the wind which will 
spring up later. Beyond the grey granite 
fence the road winds by, along which presently 
the milk-woman trips, carrying her load of 
tin cans in a great shallow round basket, poised 

23 



24 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

upon her head. She is young, broad-chested, 
upright, and alert with strength and grace. 
She is untrammelled by stays or shoes and 
stockings, and the whiteness of her head- 
kerchief and ample blouse would shame the 
snow. Her walk, from the hips alone, has 
a perfect swing and freedom, and her load, 
unheld, yet securely balanced, discomposes 
her not at all. Even so might Rebekah have 
appeared when she met Eliezer of Damascus 
at the well of Nahor ; so might the Moorish 
women have passed along this selfsame road, 
centuries ago. 

Then, slowly, very slowly and thoughtfully, 
an ox-cart will creep along the road : a primi- 
tive vehicle with removable sides of basket- 
work, and heavy, spokeless wooden wheels, 
springless and fixed to the axle, which con- 
sequently revolves with them. The cart is 
drawn by a pair of bay-coloured oxen, gentle 
and phlegmatic creatures, with big, soft 
brown eyes, their patient necks bending be- 
neath a broad yoke of curiously carved wood, 
which is sometimes quite beautiful, and a 
much prized heirloom in the peasant families. 
Horses are a rare sight here ; the ox-carts do 
all the conveying ; the patient beasts creeping 
at their slow pace for long, long, distances, 



OUR SURROUNDINGS 25 

led by a rapaz or a rapariga, and urged on 
and anathematised at frequent intervals by 
their driver, who occasionally enforces his 
words by a prod from a long stick with a nail 
hidden at its point — the ox-goad, unknown 
now to civilisation, except in metaphor. 

The last groan of the lumbering cart-wheels 
dies away in the distance at length, and the 
blessed morning quiet is unbroken by aught 
save the liquid notes of a robin perched in 
the fig tree beneath my window. 

On the farther side of the road there 
stretches a strip of common, bright with golden 
gorse and purple heather and bracken, and 
dotted with a series of tiny windmills, of such 
shape and lance-like poise of centre-pole that 
one can comprehend the possibility of the 
poor Knight of La Mancha's frenzied mistake 
as one could never do from the semblance of 
an English windmill. These are for use when 
the stream runs dry and the water-mills stand 
in enforced idleness. One of these mills has 
a tiny shrine let in its side, where the women, 
passing across the common on their way to 
market, can rest their loads upon its stone 
foundation, and may kneel and pray a little 
prayer to the Christ or the Holy Mother ; 



20 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

perhaps that their cabbages may fetch a good 
price, or that they may be given grace to 
refrain from the sin of evil-speaking or crooked- 
dealing amid the temptations of the town. 
Some of these little erections are of wood, 
some of cemented stone. Those of wood are 
moved round bodily, on tiny wheels, to present 
their sails to the particular wind which chances 
to be blowing, while the stone ones have re- 
volving roofs for the same purpose. Even 
with this facility for courting Boreas — for 
it is usually the north wind which serves 
them — the men who have them in charge 
have often hours to wait before the wind arises. 
But what matters that, in this land of infinite 
leisure ? They lounge outside the mill doors, 
and the women who have come, bearing on 
their heads their great bags of maize to be 
ground, sit too, and there seems always some- 
thing to talk about and to argue over, with eager 
voices and excited gestures — and the day is 
young, and the sun is warm ; there is no hurry, 
the wind will arise in God's good time. 

When it does come, all the sails revolve with 
bustling energy, each set seeming to chant a 
different song. There is a very old mill near 
by which perpetually groans a weary complaint: 
" I am so tired — I am so tired — do let me 6e ! " 



OUR SURROUNDINGS 27 

So unwilling is it to work, so worn out with 
its long service, that, if I could, I would buy 
it, lock it up and lose the key of it, and let 
it rest unharassed until its crazy timbers 
should crumble into dust. 

Within hail of this veteran there is a more 
modem stone mill, with a bright red roof, 
and it Jilts a gay defiance as it whirls round 
busily — " / don't care if I work all day ! / 
don't care if I work all day ! " And the more 
distant ones respond — " We're working as 
hard as you^ anyway ! We'^re working as 
hard as you, anyway ! " while the World- 
Weary One drones out its incessant grumble — 
" So tired — so tired — ^let me be — Do let me 
be ! " 

Thus the windmills in their working hours. 
In the twilight they appear as squat grey 
ghosts, with outstretched arms ; but there is 
a brief time in the early morning when they 
are transformed into dream things of almost 
unearthly beauty. When they stand all still 
in the pure light of dawn, and slowly, slowly 
creeping from one to the other, the first golden 
sunbeam touches them into marvellous colours 
of soft pink and green and purple and primrose, 
they are idealised by its magic into things of a 
fairer world ; and they share in the holiness 



28 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

and the mystery of the coming of the God of 
Day. 

Beyond this strip of common I know the 
raib*oad runs which connects us with civilisa- 
tion, but it is mercifully hidden in a shallow 
cutting. All I can see from my window is a 
wide ridge of yellow sand hillocks, and, beyond 
— the surging white surf of the Atlantic shore, 
with the broad expanse of blue sea, stretching 
away to the skyline ^ no land nearer than 
America. 

Behind that sea each clear evening the sun 
sets — a, great, beneficent, working god who has 
given all the day generously to this favoured 
land of his warmth and joy and light, and who 
sinks reluctantly beneath the waves at last, in a 
blaze of golden glory ; even after his departure 
sending up into the serene blue his opalesque 
rays of pink, orange, and green, tinging the 
stray cloudlets with purest tints of rose — his 
promise of a glad return upon the morrow. 

Each day at this charmed hour The Philo- 
sopher and I share in Nature's vespers, 
watching silently or speaking with lowered 
voices, for it is a holy time, when thought in- 
voluntarily merges into prayer ; and not until 
the last gleam has faded do we resume our 
ordinary avocations, 



OUR SURROUNDINGS 29 

Presently, in the " dimsy light," a soft blue 
haze of smoke arises from the tiny cottages 
hidden amongst the pines and the fields of 
maize ; a pleasant, pungent scent of burning 
wood is everywhere diffused. The house- 
wives are home from their toil in the fields 
and the woods, and the evening meal of milho 
and beans is in course of preparation, while 
the little bare-footed, half -clothed children 
seem, like the birds, to grow more lively as 
sleep-time approaches, and scream and chatter 
and contest as noisily as though the day had 
not been long enough for all their doings. 
But quiet succeeds, when the mae gathers 
them in, to sit on the floor or on little wooden 
stools, hugging their brown unglazed earthen- 
ware bowls, to fish with three-pronged pewter 
forks or rude wooden spoons for the fugitive 
beans or fragments of cabbage which are 
sparsely mingled in a thin mess of maize- 
meal. 

Soon, one by one, the feeble lights disappear 
in these simple homes ; doors and windows 
are fast bolted, and the glory of the night is 
left to crazy English folk, who waste oil turning 
night into day, and lie abed when the sun has 
risen in the sky. Then The Philosopher and 
I are wont to steal forth and to wander off into 



30 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

the enchanted outside world where such a wide 
choice of beauty is waiting for us alone. 

We can cross our common by The Path of 
The Windmills, scramble down and up the 
railway banks, and so find ourselves upon the 
wide silvery sands, where, seaward, our few 
rocks lie like sleeping brown monsters amongst 
the white surf, and, beyond, the waves are 
shimmering in the moonlight, whilst above 
us the great blue dome of heaven holds sus- 
pended in its measureless height the serene 
Queen of the Night, and countless myriads of 
luminaries, twinkling down upon two in- 
finitesimal Insignificants, straying upon this 
third-rate planet. But The Philosopher and 
I laugh up at them, and plan how we will 
explore them all when we are free some day, 
making a grand tour among them — after we 
have donned the Time-annihilating Hat for 
which Teufelsdrokh longed, and have watched 
the solemn wonder of Creation and of Evolu- 
tion upon this our own dear world. Ah, when 
that day comes, what a wealth there will be 
to enjoy and to do ; and what surprises there 
will be fox us ! 

Or, perhaps, we turn aside from the common, 
and, making our way down a steep little path, 
we descend into a grassy hollow amongst the 



OUR SURROUNDINGS 31 

canes and rushes, where, sheer out of the rock, 
a musical trickle of pure spring water supplies 
the household needs of ourselves and the 
neighbouring cottagers. Ever overflowing its 
tiny sandy basin, it streams down and con- 
tributes of its superfluity to a small rush- 
bordered pond, where the frogs are croaking 
their nightly chorus. Such a hubbub ! So 
many gossips raucously discussing the affairs 
of their little community, breaking in upon 
each other with importunate " quarks " and 
" spuarks," in varying depths and heights of 
tones, from the old Grandfather Frog occa- 
sionally venting a hoarse dignified comment, 
to the youngest shedder of a tail, shrieking 
of the miracle that has happened to him ; all 
knowing their luscious, weedy pond to be the 
centre of the universe and intruding man to 
be but a transitory and unwarrantable dis- 
turber of their peace. 

Here, too, between low grassy banks, winds 
the narrow stream which has run down the 
fair length of our Happy Valley, placidly 
making its way to merge all its separate per- 
sonality in the bosom of its waiting lover, the 
sea. 

On either side of its banks the broad, flat 
kneeling-stones of the washerwomen gleam 



32 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

white in the moonHght. Here, in one place, 
a loose arbour of broken branches of trees has 
been formed above them, to shade the workers 
from the blaze of the noonday sun ; and here, 
through all the long bright days, the laundresses 
splash and swirl and soap and thump the roupa 
on the stones to the accompaniment of their 
high-pitched songs and merry laughter ; after- 
wards spreading the snowy linen to dry upon 
the grassy slopes behind them. These peasant 
women appear to be endlessly washing clothes 
whenever they are not working in the fields. 
And, indeed, great are the virtues of clean 
garments, be they ever so ragged, in this 
southern land. 

Or, again, we turn our backs upon the at- 
tractions of the common and the sea, and 
wander off into the shades of our Happy 
Valley, by a tiny path beside our house which 
winds immediately into the pine-woods. Here 
all is still in the soft summer darkness. We 
soon quit the narrow path, and silently tread- 
ing our way amongst the moss and bracken, 
we follow the little stream which is flowing 
between the wooded slopes. 

A scent of dying wood-fires lingers in the 
air ; the pines emit a balmy, resinous odour ; 



OUR SURROUNDINGS 33 

our feet crush some unseen herb, and a fresh 
fragrance uprises in response. Sombrely the 
tall pine trunks shoot straight upwards in 
the dimness, and, high above, their feathery- 
tops stand stilly out like finest black etchings 
against the luminous sky. Moths flit about 
irresolutely, a droning night-beetle blunders 
against my hair, and the water below ripples 
coolly, silver-sounding, on its leisurely way to 
the washing-stones and the sea. 

The clusters of honeysuckle and the briar- 
roses show pallid faces from amongst the dark 
bushes ; and presently, over and about them, 
strange fairy lights flash elusively — ^here, there, 
not long anywhere — cutting the summer dusk 
with vivid gleams, then gone — to multiply 
and dance an elfish measure around some other 
bush or against some stalwart pine trunk. 
The fireflies are abroad, and the glowworm's 
nuptial lamp gleams coldly blue in comparison. 

As we cross the little stone bridge which 
spans the stream, and pass the miller's low 
cottage, an alert cock, wakening at the sound 
of our footsteps, crows suddenly — shrilly ; 
and the miller's yellow dog — my chief terror — 
thus disturbed from his sleep under the maize- 
stalk thatch of the shed, emits a perfunctory 
bark. Then, seeing it is but the two mad 

3 



34 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

English people who walk abroad when all should 
sleep, but who do not steal the fowls, he recurls 
himself, and reproves us by his good example. 
There springs up a tiny, soft breeze, warm, 
but refreshing after the heat of the day, and 
the ivy-leaves, clustering round the old tree 
stems, begin to rustle, and whisper, and gleam 
in the moonlight. The bell at the distant 
church sounds the hour in deep, slow, mellow 
tones. All this little world sleeps but ourselves, 
and we turn homewards and slumberwards, 
talking in hushed voices as we thread our way 
between the solemn pines. 



CHAPTER IV 

OURSELVES AND OUR FOOD 

We long ago formed ourselves into a Mutual 
Admiration Society. As he will certainly 
never read this book, I can venture to say that 
no one could live for long beside The Philo- 
sopher without coming to reverence his sweet 
sound nature, his gentleness and simplicity, 
his generous point of view in things great and 
small, the consistent nobility of his attitude 
to life which shames all weak and unworthy 
thoughts in others. One of his ancestors was 
a general in Cromwell's army, and I sometimes 
think that grand old Puritan has bequeathed 
many of his stern virtues to this his far-off 
descendant. It is a thing to thank God for — 
to have known one man who " rang true^" 
without worldly dross or moral alloy — and I 
am very proud of my Philosopher. 

And although I cannot always find calm 
reason for his belief in me, it is certainly 
beautiful and encouraging to possess a com- 

35 



36 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

rade who thinks one ever wise, witty, and 
charming. As one of John Ohver Hobbes's 
women says, "It is so much easier to be a 
heroine if you know you are some one's ideal." 
I have always been given to a measure of 
self-analysis ; and though I have often had 
occasion to disapprove of myself, I have at 
least never failed to find myself interesting. 
This may sound sadly vain, but indeed I think 
that to endeavour to form a fairly true esti- 
mate of one's own capacities is not vanity, 
rather is it the highest wisdom. Certainly one 
can have no better subject for study than one's 
self, for between ourselves and our fellows there 
is an elusive veil which is never wholly raised, 
however sincere the desire for mutual frank- 
ness may be. " Know thyself ! " said one 
of the Wise Men of Ancient Greece, and a 
modern philosopher says, " He who falls in love 
with himself enters upon a lifelong romance." 
We tend to become what we think we are ; 
moreover, for lack of patience to apply a truer 
standard, the world is very apt to take us at 
our own valuation. The man, however gifted, 
who is timid, seK-distrustful, and irresolute, 
has but a poor chance of persuading his fellows 
that he merits their honour and consideration ; 
while the man who looks out upon life with 



OURSELVES AND OUR FOOD 37 

the calm confidence of one who sees few better 
and many worse than himself, who is staunch 
to certain sane ideals, and who respects his 
own limitations, succeeds where the man of 
greater gifts but of less self-confidence will fail. 

He who accepts his own personality appre- 
ciatively, as a piece of work not designed by 
himself nor by blind chance, but by an Om- 
niscient Power Who sees the end as clearly 
as the beginning, is not belittled by his self- 
reverence, rather is his whole outlook on life 
exalted ; his actions become noble, altruistic, 
in a manner impossible to a man who despises 
himself and who has but scant belief in his 
own power to influence his fellows or to com- 
mand the world's admiration and respect. 
Confidence in one's self is positive, hopeful, 
strong ; self-mistrust is negative, enervating, 
weak ; thus the belief in one's power to do a 
thing makes it more possible of accomplish- 
ment, and I count that man wise who, with- 
out unworthy vanity, unheeding the worthless 
approbation of the fickle many, yet has his 
nature so perfectly poised that he moves through 
life in calm self-reliance and reasonable pride. 

This is a sad digression ; but it shall stand, 
since inasmuch as all self-revelation is interest- 
ing, I intend in this little book to present 



38 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

you with myself amongst other things. Are 
we not all engaged in probing, questioning, 
and proving each other's personalities ? Is 
not all Friendship just an attempt to look over 
the dividing wall into another soul's garden, 
and Love but a passionate desire to taste the 
fruits which grow therein ? We are each so 
lonely, in spite of propinquity and speech ; our 
modern life is so built round with high barriers 
of convention, tradition, and dread of origi- 
nality, that a man seldom dares to show himself 
to his fellows frankly as he is, and a bare soul 
seems in our day a positive indecency. 

But because I am so obscure that you will 
never identify me, and because I am an Irish- 
woman, and therefore by nature a rebel, I 
purpose in this little journal occasionally to 
give you myself and my thoughts — the best 
and the worst of me. Not, if I can help it, 
as others have done in so many biographies 
and diaries, an idealised self, with a simper 
and a pretty pose, reminiscent of the foot- 
lights and a properly appreciative audience ; 
not as the woman I ought to be, or the woman 
I am thought to be, but just the woman I am. 
If I should be betrayed into affectation, pray 
waste no time over me, but toss me aside. 
But if, here and there, I succeed in lifting the 



OURSELVES AND OUR FOOD 39 

veil and truthfully presenting my thoughts, 
myself, and my life, then you will be the richer 
by the knowledge of another human soul, 
travelling the same road as yourself, bound 
for the same goal at last. 

We have achieved what we should once have 
thought the impossible. We live, and live 
well, the two of us, upon less than ten shillings 
a week. Our food is appetising, varied, rich 
in all the constituents necessary for a perfect 
diet, and it is supplemented by a delightful red 
wine of the country, mellow, with an occasional 
slight sparkle lurking in its depths — neither 
claret nor burgundy, but first cousin to both — 
an addition to our fare which, to true Omarites 
such as we are, is a daily pleasure, and which 
costs us at the rate of three-half-pence a bottle. 

Of course we are not flesh-eaters ; a fact 
which we have never had reason to regret. 
However attractive to palate and eye the final 
product on the table may be, any one who has 
seen brains, sweetbread, liver, or other animal 
parts before cooking, or who is sensitive to the 
peculiar odour of mortality with which one is 
assailed in the shops where the dead bodies of 
the animals hang, will understand how beauti- 
ful I feel it to be to have found a nourishing 



40 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

dietary from which such shuddering horrors 
are banished. 

Was it Thoreau who said that if each man 
and woman had to do their own daily mur- 
dering, instead of paying to have it done for 
them, as now, from very shame and horror 
they would soon cease to kill to eat ? 

For ourselves, our health is better, we are 
lighter in spirits, more clear-headed and 
" workish " than we ever were in the days 
when we benightedly thought that animal 
food was a necessity for physical well-being. 
As that same wise Thoreau wrote long ago, 
" Whatever my own practice may be, I have 
no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the 
human race, in its gradual improvement, to 
leave off eating animals, as surely as the 
savage tribes have left off eating each other 
when they came in contact with the more 
civilised. ... If the day and the night are 
such that you greet them with joy, and life 
emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet- 
scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, 
more immortal — ^that is your success." 

And that success has long been ours. Of 
course at first we blundered along, experi- 
menting, and failing often. We started, as 
many dO; with such a fear of not eating a 



OURSELVES AND OUR FOOD 41 



sufficient amount of the equivalent-to-meat 
constituent — ^protein — that we got violent in- 
digestion from the vast numbers of beans we 
thought it necessary to consume ; from which 
we reacted to an excess of starchy food ; but 
by degrees we have grown wiser, and after 
careful calculations, and even, at first, weighing 
the different amounts, we have now so ap- 
portioned everything that our diet is both 
" pleasurable and profitable " — to body and 
purse. 

I append a list of our weekly expenditure 
on food, showing how the ten shillings is ap- 
proximated. 







s. d. 


Milk 


..2 6 


Bread 




.. 1 2 


Wine 




10^ 


Eggs 




..2 4 


Oatmeal 




. 1 


Beans and fish 




. 6 


Apples and figs 




. 3i 


Potatoes 




. 1 


Onions for soup 




. 1 


Macaroni, rice, flour . 




. 3 


Sugar 




. 3 


Nuts for butter 




. 3 


Olive oil for cooking . 




. 3 


Salt and pepper 




. 0| 
9 10^ 



42 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

We are lavish with milk and eggs, both from 
inclination and because they are rich in the 
" f at " which we should otherwise lack. That 
necessity is also provided by the oatmeal, 
which we take with our morning and evening 
meal. We have to pay dearly for it, as oat- 
meal is not usual in this country, and the weekly 
shilling shown represents but one packet of 
prepared oats, procured from stores which 
specialise in English articles. 

We take a certain amount of beans each day 
in some form or other, supplanted occasionally 
by fish, which we can buy here for a low price — 
fifty sardines or a great plate of tiny mackerel 
for three-halfpence, or a large fresh haddock 
for fourpence. Our baker brings us four small 
loaves daily. I have grown in our field some 
of the tall cabbages which are universal here, 
for green vegetables ; bay leaves for flavouring, 
mint, and healthful dandelion for salad the 
hedges supply. We can get good figs for 
stewing at twopence per pound, eight large 
apples for a penny, and a long straw strand 
of onions, lasting for months, for fourpence. 

I must confess to one daily luxury which 
does not figure in my list, since a certain be- 
nevolent fairy sends me a supply each birth- 
day — tea, which is a prohibitive price here in 



OURSELVES AND OUR FOOD 43 

Portugal (about 85. per pound), the duty on 
it being very heavy. In winter I make a 
dehcious substitute for cocoa with flour 
which has been well browned in the oven, 
boiled in milk, and a few drops of vanilla 
added. 

We have a choice of many kind of beans. 
There is a certain brown bean which makes 
a peculiarly meaty and delicious soup, which 
would deceive any flesh devotee by its appe- 
tising odour when cooking and good flavour 
when served. Then there is a good mixture 
of white, yellow, and red beans ; the big white 
haricots, which, stewed in milk, with a slight 
thickening of barley or rice, and a pinch of 
finely chopped parsley added at the last mo- 
ment, make a delicate and delicious soup, or 
fried in olive oil, after stewing, are very tasty. 
Then there are the grao de hico, a kind of peas, 
with useful properties which, as garbanzos 
in Spain, are as invariably served as our pota- 
toes are at home. There are also quaint little 
peas called " little monks," which they 
amusingly resemble ; and other varieties of 
the legume family. 

The secret of success in all bean cookery is 
to soak the beans in salted water for twenty- 
four hours before cooking, and then to let 



44 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

them boil gently for seven or eight hours more. 
They cannot be hurried. And in all vegetarian 
cookery a great essential to success is to vary 
your flavours ; not to be content to serve the 
proper foods in the proper quantities, but to 
make them as different and as appetising as 
possible. Good curries can be made with 
beans, or with cold fish. 

Pythagoras would not eat beans because 
they had souls, he averred. We do not share 
his scruples, making them the foundation of 
our daily meals ; and if we thus unwittingly 
speed souls upon their upward way, we expect 
them rather to be grateful to us for their 
accelerated passage ! 

Stewed figs are wholesome and good, and 
do not require sweetening, which is a point in 
their favour, as sugar is very dear here — six- 
pence a pound. Indeed, everything which is 
imported is raised to a much higher price than 
at home, by reason of the heavy duties. The 
only wise course for poor folk is to live as 
entirely as may be upon the products of the 
country, which are all good and cheap, as the 
people who buy them are so poor. Such adapt- 
ability is essential, if one would be a successful 
world-citizen ; and in whatever country The 
Philosopher and I have chanced to be, we 



OURSELVES AND OUR FOOD 45 

have eaten as far as possible as the people 
themselves did ; knowing that the habitual 
fare is usually the result of the selection and 
economical consideration of generations. 

Butter is to be got in the town, at a high 
price, and I have once or twice seen an un- 
wholesome-looking bit of pale substance under 
a glass in the village stores ; but though milk 
is good and plentiful, the country folk do not 
seem to cultivate the art of butter-making. 
So I make a good substitute with nuts to 
spread upon our bread, pulverising them in 
my mincing-machine with a special nut-butter 
disc. Walnut butter is especially delectable, 
besides being a most valuable form of proteid, 
and rich in oil. Pea-nut butter is also good, 
and one soon grows accustomed to the peculiar 
" twang " of these humble little nuts, es- 
pecially if a judicious pinch of salt is intro- 
duced into the butter-making. 



CHAPTER V 

DOMESTICITIES 

My kitchen is but a cupboard in size, though 
quite sufficiently large for our simple cuisine. 
One side of it is occupied by a most indis- 
pensable piece of furniture — high, broad, and 
made of white wood — a kind of combination 
larder, dresser, sink, and store-cupboard, in 
appearance not unlike the cwpwrdd tri-darn 
which one sees in old Welsh houses. At the 
top, the larder, an open cupboard, is shielded 
from flies by a curtain of white net. Below, 
my modest stock of crockery is displayed ; 
below that again, there is a rack for draining 
the plates, then a broad sink with an outlet 
pipe, and beneath that, to the floor, a deep 
store-cupboard with two doors. 

Our pots and crocks would be an unending 
source of joy to a Pre-Raphaelite. From our 
basins and soup plates the Virgin herself might 
have eaten, so quaint and crude are they in 

46 



DOMESTICITIES 47 

form and colouring. There are two great 
terra-cotta jugs for drawing water from the 
spring — ^precisely the same in form as the one 
to be seen in pictures which the woman of 
Samaria carried on her head when she met 
the Stranger's gaze at the well, little guessing 
that her Master looked upon her — and which 
are balanced on our women's heads in the 
same Eastern fashion. There are odd little 
unglazed terra-cotta crocks for heating morsels 
of food, similar in quaint shape and rude finish 
to the ones taken from ancient sepulchres, 
and costing absurdly little. 

For my cooking utensils — ^from England I 
brought a cast-aluminium stewpan and frying- 
pan, a fish-basket, a potato-masher, and a 
mincing-machine : these, with some of the 
cheap tin pots of the peasantry, form all my 
stock. 

Then there is a broom, a pail, and a scrubbing 
brush, and that, with the exception of our tin 
travelling bath, is aU. No kitchen stove, and 
no place for one ; not a chimney nor a fire- 
place in the house. Imagine the despair of an 
English cook, deprived of her kitchen range, 
and commanded to prepare a dinner ! But 
also picture the economy possible to a menage 
in whose lower regions there lurks no huge 



48 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

monster with gaping jaws, insatiably consuming 
coal, coal, coal, from earliest morning until 
late at night. 

My cooking is almost entirely done upon a 
fogareiro — a tiny iron stove for burning char- 
coal, resembling in shape and size a shallow 
pudding basin, with side handles and a grating 
in the bottom, fixed on a little stand. This 
is placed on the floor, in a corner of one of 
the deep granite window recesses, and here it 
glows steadily, unostentatiously, through the 
long hours, doing its good work upon the beans, 
the porridge, and the contents of other pots 
and pans which are balanced upon it in hair- 
breadth fashion. Sometimes I have as many 
as five cooking utensils clustering over this 
tiny fire ; and in our unregenerate days I have 
cooked a dinner upon it comprising boiled 
fowl, bread sauce, potatoes, greens, custard, 
and stewed apples ! 

For emergencies there is a little eighteen- 
penny oil stove, but petroleum is so dear here 
that I do not use it more than can be helped ; 
whilst my tiny fogareiro burns from ten o'clock 
in the morning until seven o'clock at night, 
and the charcoal costs us one shilling per week. 

Our modest stock of household silver was 
stolen from the trunk in which it was packed, 



DOMESTICITIES 49 

somewhere en route — a loss which would have 
distressed me more than it did had not The 
Philosopher explained most reasonably that it 
was so much the less to take care of and to 
worry over, and as we fortunately had a few 
forks, spoons, and four precious knives in our 
luncheon basket, it has probably been " all for 
the best," as good people are fond of assuring 
one that other people's misfortunes always 
are. 

When The Philosopher and I first kept 
house, I used to fume and grieve terribly over 
breakages and other domestic fatalities, to his 
great amusement, until he took my education 
in hand, and taught me to emulate the calm 
of the lady in Byron's poem, who was — 

" Mistress of herself, though china fall." 

" For, oh, most foolish Pearl," he would say, 
" of what benefit is it to lose two good things 
by the accident — the article itself, and your 
own serenity ? " 

We have a rapariga who comes for two 
hours each morning to do our simple house 
work. She answers to the name of Michelina, 
and somehow it seems to befit her pretty, 
roguish self. She is a dainty little person, with 

4 



50 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

sparkling dark eyes and brown curls which 
have a way of escaping from the restraining 
folds of her head-kerchief, and she goes about 
her work with an earnestness and method 
which is not the least of her charms for me. 

Naturally, we and our foreign ways both 
interest her greatly, and she will pause, broom 
or pail in hand, to watch the progress of The 
Philosopher's painting, or to gaze at the wonder 
of my typewriter at work, until recalled to 
duty by a gently suggestive " Que quere ? " 
from one of us. 

Then, when all the washing-up is done, the 
fogareiro lighted, and the little house put in 
order for the day, I give her a bundle of soiled 
linen and a chunk of soap, and her little bare 
feet patter off, with her short full skirt co- 
quettishly swinging, and her bright head- 
kerchief fluttering in the wind, down to the 
brook-side, where she joins the merry, chat- 
tering group of washerwomen, returning an 
hour later to spread out to dry upon the grass 
the spotless clean clothes, whose snowy white- 
ness would arouse the envy of any English 
housewife. And this without any " washing- 
day " horrors. No sloppy scullery, no steamy 
copper (with another hungry fire to be fed), 
no soda, nor blue, nor washing-powder : just 



DOMESTICITIES 51 

the soft water of the running stream, a little 
soap, and the beneficent sunshine. 

What a popular event washing-day would 
be with our maids at home in England if it 
could only mean a morning in the open air 
and the sunshine, at the stream's side, with 
the high road winding by above to give occa- 
sional distraction, and the gay companionship 
of half a dozen fellow-washers to lighten the 
labour ! No longer would the ominous phrase, 
" no washing," figure in all domestic adver- 
tisements : rather the grievance would be if 
there were none. 

But then, alas ! to make that possible, in 
addition to the simple custom this wonderful 
climate would need to be imported. 

Michelina, for all her daily services, counts 
herself well paid with a monthly wage of eight 
tostoes — about three shillings and fourpence — 
and a proud and delighted little maid is she 
when pay-day comes round. Never do the 
saucepans shine so brightly, nor the boards 
gleam so spotlessly, as on that day ; and, 
when possible, her satisfaction is also shown 
by the presentation of a big bunch of flowers 
from the garden of her mother's cottage. 
Once there chanced to be a bottle of wine 
lying mysteriously broken on the floor of the 



52 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

store-room after the rapariga had been sweeping 
there, but the next morning brought such a 
beautiful bouquet that, in the face of its re- 
morseful loveliness, I had not the heart to 
press awkward inquiries. 



CHAPTER VI 

ONE OF OUR SUNDAYS 

October, 

To-day is Sunday, a calm, fresh autumn 
morning. The Philosopher and I have early 
betaken ourselves up our Happy Valley to a 
favourite spot on the hill-side among the pines, 
where, between the stems, we can glimpse 
the shimmering blue of the distant sea, and the 
quiet is only occasionally disturbed by the 
hoarse cries of the magpies as they flit, far 
above our heads, in the tall tree-tops, or the 
self-absorbed drone of some belated humble-bee, 
searching for the honey that is over in the 
heather amongst the bracken. Here we re- 
cline in fragrant nests of pine needles and fern. 
Clean garments seem to me to be somehow 
part of the Sunday " thought of God " ; as 
we should attire ourselves in our best for a 
visit to an honoured friend, so it is pleasant to 
wear pure, fresh raiment on the day which 
we have specially devoted to communion with 

53 



54 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

that nwst dear Friend. So I have donned a 
clean white frock and my best silver waist- 
belt ; and as fresh clothes and a decent tie 
were cunningly placed at my dear Philosopher's 
bedside, and his ordinary ones abstracted, even 
he is looking almost English in respectability. 

On the way I found a few late blackberries 
and a spray of most sweet honeysuckle. 
Amongst the bracken the spiders overnight 
had woven great wide webs, only this morning 
to find them useless for sporting purposes, 
each weighed down in every mesh with heavy 
dewdrops, covering the gorse and heather with 
a cloth of silver, rarely beautiful in the sun- 
light. 

There is a delicious crispness in the air, 
which is far removed from chill, but is ex- 
hilirating, making motion a pleasure, causing 
a subtle feeling of cleanliness, purity, and 
health. So had it intoxicated us, that we 
marched here along the narrow, sunny tracks 
amongst the brambles up the brook-side, 
chanting some of the grand old hymns which, 
perchance, our loved ones in England were 
singing at the same moment at their morning 
service. 

Now, The Philosopher lies absorbed in his 
well-worn Montaigne, and I have been 



ONE OF OUR SUNDAYS 55 

lazily, blissfully gazing up at the perfectness 
of the intense blue of the sky as seen between 
the olive green of the pine branches, singing 
softly, and half unconsciously, to my own 
happy self, that most wistful prayer to " The 
Pillar of Cloud "— 

" Lead, kindly Light, . . . lead Thou me on ! " 

Ah, there was a time when my poor little 
Protestant soul used to shiver with appre- 
hension when I voiced that appeal. Black 
doubt would shadow the sunlight of my con- 
fidence in God's care. How could I hope that 
my feeble, inarticulate cries for guidance in 
life's crises would avail when Newman could 
send up this appeal from the depths of his 
tortured heart, at the cross-roads of his life, 
and that for all response his great soul was 
permitted to stumble into the quagmires of 
superstition, dogma, and intellectual bondage ! 

Now, from a little farther up the mountain 
side, I can see that his prayer was answered — 
given his nature — in the wisest way possible : 
for even as some are content to feel the vibra- 
tions from The Heart of the World stirring in 
their own, casting off all shackles of Time and 
Sense and Formula as they project their free 
souls into the Spiritual — " The Real " — in that 



56 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

communion which alone is true worship, so 
other natures must have symbols and stately 
ritual to typify their union with the Spiritual ; 
and if it helps them ? — ^Well ! If the dervish 
in his giddy waltz can so " feel God " better, 
then for heaven's sake let him dance ; if the 
woman, glibly mumbling off pages of an un- 
known tongue in the course of a ceremonial 
appealing to the senses; if to have the ear, 
the eye, the nose stimulated, aids her to draw 
any nearer to the Unseen — ^then for her such 
things are a positive good. Some are helped 
by the materialisation of the instinct of wor- 
ship, others are stifled by it. Creeds and 
dogmas, what are they all but the uplifting of 
the soul of man to The Good from Whom it 
has come, according to the rites which seem 
to help it the most ? Whether they follow the 
teaching of one great Guide or the other, 
Buddha, Mahomet, or The Christ — climbing 
upward by whichever narrow way seems 
indicated after their Guide's precepts have 
been twisted, maimed, and misconstrued in 
the passing of the centuries — matters very little, 
just a little less or more of happiness and 
light. Eastern gospel or Western gospel, they 
are each paths, made misleading often by 
translation and tradition, but still paths, tend- 



ONE OF OUR SUNDAYS 57 

ing upwards, by their divers routes, to one Final 
Goal. It is the impulse to climb that matters. 
I think that what one has most to dread 
nowadays is the atrophy of the soul ; that 
terrible deadness which steals over it when it 
has breathed too long and too deeply in the 
miasmas of the Valley of Things Material ; 
when the body seems all-sufficing, and the 
baubles of time and sense — the fleeting things 
we can see and touch and handle — become to 
us the Real, and the things of the spirit seem 
the things outside Life, instead of its very 
essence. Then, indeed, those who are brave of 
us would cry — 

*' Lord, Thy most pointed pleasure take. 
And stab my spirit broad awake ; 
Or, Lord, if too obdurate I, 
Choose Thou, before that spirit die, 
A piercing pain, a killing sin. 
And to my dead heart run them in ! " 

Blessed be any route — ^pain, pleasure, loss, 
humiliation, in daily life ; ceremonial, dogma, 
genuflexions, vestments, in worship — any 
path by which the soul of man can be helped 
in its progress upward from The Valley of The 
Senses to The Hill of God. 

But for us. The Philosopher and I, we are 
pure pagans in our methods. No smaller 



58 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

church will suffice for us than the dome of 
God's own blue sky ; we need no choir but the 
happy birds, no preacher other than the solemn, 
holy whispers of the tall pines rustling in the 
wind above our heads, no prayers more formu- 
lated than the silent turning of our souls to 
The Heart of the World, Who knows us through 
and through, and understands, and cares ; and 
Who surely draws near to us, across the ferns 
and moss, through the shadowy, sunflecked 
glades, between the dark pine stems, of this our 
Paradise, and with His presence blesses us, 
His simple, worshipful children. 

Diderot appealed to the Frenchmen of his 
day to " set their God at liberty." Ah, " What 
children are we, erecting churches and chapels 
to exclude infinite space, which is the most 
appropriate symbol, did we but reflect, of 
Infinity ! " But, " Some people have to go to 
church. They would forget God existed alto- 
gether if they didn't." 

Well, if it helps ! But as for us, we would 
aspire to be as Spinoza was described — " a 
God-intoxicated man " ; eating, breathing, 
sleeping, sorrowing, or rejoicing — ^living ever 
conscious of the all-permeating essence of The 
Creator, of the Divine in nature ; knowing 



ONE OP OUR SUNDAYS 59 

ourselves to be connected by inseverable 
tendons with The Heart of the World, as simply, 
as naturally, as confidingly as our lowlier 
brethren, the dear birds and beasts. That 
seems better than all the systems which we term 
" religions " : to " feel God " the whole time. 
Then, to act unworthily, ignobly, becomes 
an offence against the nature which we draw 
from Him, and less and less possible. That 
is what the old Puritans meant, I think, 
by their " growth in grace " ; and that is what 
we mean by " feeling God," 

To so many people He seems to be just an 
idol, shut up in a box on all secular occasions, 
but taken out and dusted and prayed to on 
Sundays and marriage and burial days. An 
idol whose worship is accounted to be " so 
respectable ! " but not to be talked about nor 
thought about, nor to have any bearing upon 
the daily events of life. Indeed, an awkward 
topic of conversation, the introduction of 
which is considered " bad form," as being 
calculated to make conversation languish, and 
to put people into a dreary, stilted, and un- 
natural mood. 

Now, I wonder whether any one has dared 
to think, as I love to do, that, as we are the 
creations of God, and as all the best and most 



60 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

endearing qualities of our natures proceed 
from God (for if not from Him, then whence 
come they ?) and as they can be but faint, 
faint reflections of Himself — since the part 
must be less than the whole — He must neces- 
sarily Himself possess them all in far greater 
intensity. Therefore, besides having the 
graver noble qualities of truth, justice, honour, 
magnanimity and compassion. He must also 
be gay, witty, frank, kindly, generous, bright- 
thoughted, and must have a keen sense of 
humour. No truly charming qualities of your 
most finished modern product, a " gentleman," 
but God must have them to an unrealisable 
extent. Your most delightful friend, whom 
you love to be with and to share every thought, 
grave and gay, who amuses, stimulates, and 
ennobles you, who by his very existence makes 
the world a better place for you, can give 
you but a mere faint, pale, far-off reflection of 
the delightful nature of The Great Heart of 
The World, Whom Marcus Aurelius termed 
The All, Whom we call God ; while unamiable 
and unworthy characters are merely farther 
off from Him, have more lessons to learn, and 
a farther way to journey upwards before they 
too begin to reflect stray gleams of His own 
beautiful nature to our consciousness. 



ONE OF OUR SUNDAYS 61 

I once lay in one of the wards of a big hos- 
pital when a clergyman came to pay his weekly 
ministration to the sick and suffering occupants. 
He was obviously most earnestly well-inten- 
tioned, for nothing but a real sense of duty 
would have taken him from bed to bed, dis- 
tributing little tracts, saying a few perfunctory 
words to each recipient, and appearing mildly 
obtuse to the sullen rejoinders of some, the 
silence of others, and the pointed rudeness 
of a few. Then, from the centre of the ward, 
he recited a few formal collects and delivered 
a short sermon, in dry, conventional tones, 
on — the coming Pan- Anglican Conference ! 
After which he sighed, and went his way to 
another ward. 

Poor blind, well-meaning, futile man ! In 
that hospital ward the dark wings of the Angel 
of Death were almost audible to those who had 
ears to hear. He had indeed come at mid- 
night the previous night, and had hushed the 
long, long moans of one of us ; he might return 
at any moment — ^his sombre shadow was 
hovering over more than one. Some, in terror 
and sick dread of the unknown, were waiting 
to face the surgeon's knife, others were stifling 
moans as the quivering flesh smarted and 
throbbed in the first painful processes of 



62 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

healing. Most of us were in pain, and all of us 
were nervous, overstrung, scared by our un- 
accustomed surroundings and by vague dread- 
ful possibilities. Our bodies — those healthy, 
careless bodies which had been wont to talk 
and laugh and walk without thought of them- 
selves — seemed now to be seized fast in the 
grip of a stern Power who might at any mo- 
ment rack them with unendurable agony, or 
wrest them from us altogether. Too many 
of us were the bread-winners, and to this per- 
sonal and physical distress was added the 
gnawing anxiety as to the welfare of those 
dependent upon us. Though we were so in- 
articulate, we badly wanted help. We wanted 
Some One to lean our aching hearts upon ; 
Some One who understood ; Some One with 
human compassion — Who cared ! Ah, if he 
had only presented to us some such a kindly, 
powerful, pitiful, human God-Friend as the 
one I have been deducing, what blessed comfort 
and security might have crept into many a 
poor, frightened heart ! 

But so far removed is this from being the 
proper " religious " conception of a grey, 
somewhat stupid, and actively revengeful God, 
or the " gigantic clergyman in a white tie," 
who is presented to us for our enlightenment in 



ONE OF OUR SUNDAYS 63 

so many of our churches, that I know I must 
indefinably shock you. 

Well ! Even as I write these words, borne 
on the warm breeze across the pine-clad hills, 
come the deep, slow, sonorous notes of a church 
bell, announcing the hour of noon. Its 
measured, heavy strokes seem pregnant with 
memories of the dead centuries, and the by- 
gone generations of men who have lived their 
brief span in this same sunlight, and loved 
and suffered, and struggled a little upwards, 
and passed on. And the pines softly wave 
their green branches and whisper to each other 
that it all matters so little — so little ! 



CHAPTER VII 

YOUNG PORTUGAL 

" Portugal's wrongs are great, great ! — I tell 
you, senhora, that France before the Revolution 
was in the state that we in Portugal are to-day. 
And the end must be the same." 

I glanced lazily up at the young man from 
the comfort of my deck-chair. A calm full 
moon was shining overhead, a soft warm breeze 
just stirred my hair, and we were ploughing 
our way through the Bay of Biscay at a good 
fifteen knots an hour. There was a ripple of 
water at the steamer's side, and beyond, where 
the waves swelled up, curved, and subsided 
again, a thousand tiny phosphorescences 
gleamed and disappeared and gleamed again. 
The moment was so peaceful, so suited for 
quiet nocturnal musings, that it seemed sadly 
out of harmony to be strenuous. 

But my companion had no such compunction. 
He leaned against the deck-house beside my 

64 



YOUNG PORTUGAL 65 

chair, and seemed actually to vibrate with 
intensity of feeling. His arms were folded 
across his chest, and his big dark eyes glared 
up defiantly at the moon, as though in that 
placid luminary he descried the enemies of his 
suffering country. 

My lips twitched ; he was a mere boy, and 
he was looking so tragi-comically defiant. 
Then memory recalled the terrible happenings 
that had been wrought in Portugal by the pas- 
sionate sentiment which this boy was voicing, 
and I grew grave. He was the age of his young 
king, and he represented the mental attitude 
of thousands of young fellows in his country 
to-day — that country to which The Philosopher 
and I were returning, where we had found our 
" Walden " and had made our home. In- 
terest overcame my indolence ; I sat up in my 
chair and said : 

" Do tell me more about it all — the trouble 
in your country, I mean. As an English- 
woman I only know that we were very fond 
of your King Carlos " 

*' Yes ! " he fiercely interrupted. " You 
English liked him, of course, because he was 
a great sportsman and what you call a good 
fellow. That is all you know or cared about. 
But we in Portugal, we suffered ! Ah, Jesus ! 

5 



66 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

Perhaps he did not mean it ; he did not under- 
stand, and he listened to bad counsellors. 
Though our unfortunate country is so poor, 
we were drained of money — ^unconstitutionally 
and recklessly. The press was muzzled ; our 
mouths were silenced ; no man was a free 
citizen. And then, when at last we gained 
his ear and implored him to redress the wrongs 
inflicted upon us by his hated minister, what 
happened ? Why, he referred our grievances 
to the very tyrant against whose injustice we 
were petitioning ! Can you wonder, senhora, 
that we were driven to frenzy by it all ? " 

" You surely do not seek to justify the ter- 
rible, brutal tragedy of last year ? " I cried 
hotly. 

" No — ah, no ! " he hastily responded. 
" That was the bitterest blow to all honourable 
Republicans. Our hearts were wrung with 
horror ! And we all realised how it prejudiced 
our cause in the eyes of civilisation. I do not 
— I cannot — ^justify that : I only explain it. 
Where there are great evils, senhora, there 
you must expect desperate remedies. On 
that black day — ^when it happened — there, 
in the bay, were anchored the ships which were 
to carry away our brothers to exile and dis- 
honour. And for what ? For daring to speak 



YOUNG PORTUGAL 67 

their minds ! For daring to stand up for their 
poor and voiceless compatriots — ^for resenting 
their wrongs ! The king was on his way to 
sign their doom. And there seemed no hope 
of better things. None ! None ! " 

" But at any rate that is all over now," I 
ventured soothingly. " Your young King 
Manoel is doing all he can " 

" Yes," he responded, half reluctantly ; 
"he is certainly different. He wishes to do 
what is right, I do believe. He is repaying 
what he can of the money unjustly taken, and 
he says that he desires the country's good; 
but—" 

" Well, what would you have more ? " I 
asked. " He cannot perform miracles ; but it 
does seem to me that you have the prospect 
of a new and happier era for your country 
now." 

" Ah ! It is the priesthood ! " Young Por- 
tugal cried, with infinite distaste. " The 
priesthood ! they are the curse of the country. 
No progress is possible where their dominance is 
absolute. It is to their interest to keep the 
people ignorant, or their power would be 
threatened. And if they have our king in their 
atrophying clutch, what hope have we ? The 
cursed Jesuit influence will gradually destroy 



68 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

his liberal tendencies. And his mother's 
influence, — he is already too religious " 

" And for that, whom have you but your- 
selves to thank ! " I cried. " On that terrible 
day of regicide and murder, when — ^in his own 
capital, surrounded by his own people — ^your 
king was done to death by that traitor's 
cowardly shot, you drove the poor boy and 
his mother into the only refuge that seemed 
left to them — ^the arms of their Church, the 
consolations of religion. I am no Church- 
woman, senhor, I feel the need of no man- 
made rites between my soul and my God ; 
but even I can realise that if your young king 
had not been able to cling to the support of 
his faith, he could not have lived beyond that 
awful hour." 

The youth at my side glared gloomily across 
the water and was silent, while " eight bells " 
chimed clearly out from the fo 'castle of the 
steamer, and was repeated in the stern. My 
indifference was deeply stirred now ; words 
came surging up, and out of my ignorance I 
spoke. 

" If I dare say so, senhor, it appears to me 
that you and your compatriots are now in the 
baffled position of a woman who has been de- 
prived of a long-standing grievance. You 



YOUNG PORTUGAL 69 

had wrongs ; you resented them. But the 
chief of them are gone now, and your great 
reason for revolt and defiance is over. For the 
Past — surely it was all expiated on that bloody 
day ! Merciful Time should be permitted — 
in humanity, in honour — ^to consign it all to 
the waters of oblivion. The Future is Portu- 
gal's. You have a young, disinterested, al- 
truistic monarch, eager to understand and to 
aid his people's needs. As to any undue in- 
fluence of the priesthood — I would not fear, if 
I were you ! King Manoel has too clear a 
brain ; the unescapable influences of Life will 
teach him ; he will marry ; he will mature. 
The whole world is casting off the dominance of 
superstition. Even in Italy, its headquarters, 
the people are wrenching off the shackles — ^are 
freeing themselves. Its hour is sounding ; and 
its death-knell is education. Agitate for thaty 
senhor ! Petition for that ! Make sacrifices 
for that ! Educate ! Educate ! Educate ! 
and you can afford to defy that ancient bogey 
—Church." 

" Progress is so slow," returned my com- 
panion, in hopeless tones, " and my country 
is so poor " 

" But if you had your way, if you esta- 
blished a republic to-morrow, your president 



70 A SHADOWED PAKADISE 

could not fill an empty treasury," I retorted. 
" The country is principally poor on account 
of the want of knowledge amongst the people. 
Why, you are a couple of hundred years be- 
hind the times in all matters of agriculture 
and forestry. With such a climate as yours 
you could cultivate heaps of things which are 
practically unknown to your country-people at 
present — and find a ready market for them, 
too. What you lack is initiative ; and new 
ventures can only follow in the wake of new 
knowledge." 

" Our bureaucracy is rotten — rotten to the 
core ! " continued Young Portugal, shifting 
his ground. " Every man for himself — to line 
his own pockets. Most men to be bought, if 
the price is but high enough." 

" Then let it be the work of the young liberal 
party to reform that," I cried. " Shed light 
upon the dishonest practices, and fight as in- 
exorably as you please to put down peculation 
and bribery — ^you will find plenty to do — ^but 
do not imagine that disloyalty to your king 
would bring that evil to an end. The history 
of the world, both in the past and in the pre- 
sent, tends to prove that republics are cursed 
with greater and wider-reaching corruption, 
with more virulent a plague of dishonest 



YOUNG PORTUGAL 71 

officials, than the average monarchy. I have 
travelled much, and I assure you, senhor, that 
if you seek to find the lowest and most bare- 
faced forms of jobbery, of mercenary self- 
interest, subterfuge and falsehood, and the 
most widespread and unblushing systems of 
bribery, I commend you to a republic." 

Young Portugal shrugged his shoulders 
expressively ; and I continued : 

" Yours is a grand country, senhor ; a 
splendid country, with the best climate in 
Europe, I think. It only wants judiciously 
exploiting to begin a fresh age of productive- 
ness and prosperity. Now, if a mere woman 
may advise, I would say to all you young men : 
Rally round your king, loyally and enthu- 
siastically ; strengthen his hands by your 
belief in him ; and work — ^work for all you 
are worth — not for a doubtfully beneficial 
revolution, but for grants for education, for 
the appointment of teachers of agriculture all 
over the country ; for the improvement of 
your present fruits and grains, for the importa- 
tion of fresh varieties. Educate the people 
in a little practical knowledge ; encourage ex- 
periments — don't be afraid of new things and 
new ways. Educate the people and purge 
your officialdom ! It may not make so good 



72 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

a party cry, it may not stir your blood in the 
same way, but it would be the truer patriotism, 
believe me. Work, work for what you now 
pray you may be granted — 

' A liberal constitution ! ' " 

Is the monarchical ideal fading from the 
world's mind ? Have we indeed progressed so far 
from the tradition of chivalry and the " divinity 
which doth hedge a king," that those gracious 
attributes of leisure, culture, refinement, and 
disinterestedness, with which that tradition 
at its highest was associated, are no longer 
valued in the scheme of the nation's welfare ? 
Have we reached so dead a level of utilitarian- 
ism that we desire but a General Manager of 
each country's affairs, and are conscious no 
longer of the subtle ethical needs of the nation's 
soul — ^the advantages of a fixed high standard 
of social living, and the concentrating of all 
that is hopeful, noble, and inspiring around 
the person of one hereditary Head ? If, in- 
deed, it is so, then the world is growing greyer. 



CHAPTER VIII 

SUMMER TIME 

How short the actual winter is in these southern 
lands ! I trust I am not ungrateful for Nature's 
favours, but these springs seem almost to 
resemble a too-facile woman : her self -revela- 
tion is so sudden, so complete that, while 
welcoming her favours, one misses those deli- 
cate, shy, half -reluctant intimations of coming 
surrender which are so subtly conveyed in a 
northern spring, and for which actual beauty 
seems scarcely necessary. Indeed I have 
experienced the keenest stirring of spring in 
my blood in some London street : in a warmer 
gleam of sunlight upon a muddy pavement, in 
a glimpse of a clump of bursting lilac buds in 
some quiet square, or a breath of south-west 
wind at night after rain. 

But here — ^while in the more sheltered corners 
of our valley the oak and willow leaves still 
linger, beautiful in their russet splendour, and 

73 



74 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

the bright purple spikes of the bell-heather 
are still to be found here and there amongst 
the brown bracken, and we seem scarcely to 
have said farewell to the glory of the autumn, 
lo ! in every hedge the buds are bursting 
into fresh green sprays ; white heath, sweet 
violets, " lords and ladies," daisies, dandelions, 
and cow-parsley are springing up everywhere, 
and the fields are carpeted with bright little 
wild marigolds. The sun seems to gain in 
power each day, and the birds, with infinite 
chattering, are preparing for their vernal 
festival. 

Then numberless flowers spring into being ; 
the fresh fern fronds uncurl, new tender green 
clothes the trees ; a week of gentle, warm rain, 
and, behold, the summer is here ! 

Autumn is mellow, maturely lovely, with 
long, clear, still days of blue and gold ; the 
winter is no worse than an English autumn, 
with bluer skies and brighter sunshine than 
a northern September, broken by times of tem- 
pestuous rain ; but of all the recurring seasons 
here, I think I love the early summer the best. 
In its young, fresh, generous beauty, with sap 
and grass still undried and unscorched by the 
fiercer sun of midsummer, it is full of an un- 
speakable poetry and tenderness. Our woods 



SUMMER TIME 76 

become enchanted places. Overhead, mingling 
with the stately pines, fresh green branches 
wave gently in the soft warm breeze ; a thou- 
sand subtle fragrances of sweet and natural 
things perfume the translucent air ; beneath, 
one's feet tread upon a carpet of moss, new 
grass, and humble little flowers and ferns flecked 
with the sunlight ; in the hedges, a tangle of 
honeysuckle, wild roses, and blackberry 
blossom ; above, blue, blue sky, seen between 
the dreamily waving branches of the nut trees 
and the oaks ; while myriads of tiny winged 
insects flash out a brief, joyous existence in 
the sunbeams, and the clear-throated robins, 
chaffinches, thrushes, and blackbirds — more 
eloquent than man — ^warble their hymn of 
praise in the bushes. 

At such a season how can one work ! How 
can one do aught but lie, blissfully entranced, 
at the foot of some tall pine or evergreen oak ; 
contented merely to he, in such weather, in such 
a Paradise ! Are not these moments Life in 
its most perfect sense ? And is not this very 
absorption into Nature's beauteous heart part 
of the growth of the soul ? 

Thus, this morning, I lay among the young 
fern fronds and tall grasses in the shade of 
the low branches of an old cork-oak, with 



76 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

Horace's Odes for company, lazily conscious 
of all the beauty around me — of the dance of 
the gnats, the dreamy fluttering of the new 
leaves, the scent of the freshly cut grass in an 
adjacent meadow, and the high-pitched voices 
of the washerwomen at the stream below, 
singing some interminable plaintive folk-song. 
Presently, Horace slipped unheeded from my 
fingers, and gradually, very gradually, the 
tranquillity, the warmth, and a pleasant sense 
of well-being lulled me off into a delicious 
sleep. 

" The senhora — is she dead ? " 

These words, uttered in hesitating, won- 
dering tones, unlocked my eyes and brought 
me up on my elbow in a sudden scare. At a 
respectful distance, amongst all the sun-flecked 
greenery, stood a peasant, leaning upon his 
scythe and viewing me in obvious perplexity. 
One of those working-bees — a woman — flying 
prone, with closed eyes, under a tree in the 
morning ! He had probably never before 
seen so strange a sight. She certainly must 
be either very ill or dead. 

I frowned up at him, puzzled and half- 
awake ; then, sitting up and snatching at my 
bat, 



SUMMER TIME 77 

" No, no, thank you ! — Thank you very 
much ! " I stammered out. It was all my 
Portuguese was equal to in my confusion ; 
but it was sufficient to convince him that I 
was only one of those queer English folk, and 
that I was not in need of his aid ; and he dis- 
creetly went his way through the wood. 

But the spell was broken. A teasing con- 
science-microbe stirred, and a " proper sense 
of duty " responded. I rose and, tucking my 
Horace under my arm, started forthwith home- 
wards to prepare my neglected Philosopher's 
lunch. 

However, I was tempted to linger on my 
way, for, beneath the pines, an old, ragged 
wisp of a woman was stooping about, collecting 
the big brown cones into a sack, and, following 
her upward gaze, I saw a small girl scaling one 
of the tall bare trunks with monkey-like 
agility. There was no foothold ; there were 
no branches to aid her progress, for all the lower 
branches of the pines are invariably lopped for 
fuel. She was hugging the trunk round with 
both her arms and legs, and jerking herself 
upwards, higher and higher, by a curious 
agile movement of her thin little body. She 
appeared quite at home and self-possessed at 
her simian task ; and when, while I held my 



78 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

breath in terror for her safety, she reached a 
branch — some sixty or seventy feet in the air — 
she shook and beat it to bring down the cones 
to fill her grandmother's waiting sack, then 
climbed still higher to another branch. And 
for these same pine-cones, which make fragrant 
resinous fuel for our little stove in winter, we 
pay the old woman forty reis — twopence a 
hundred ! 

When the heat of July and August comes, 
we close the thick wooden shutters of our sunny 
windows, and leave wide open the shady cool 
window facing north, which is at this season 
a most precious possession. We really suffer 
but little discomfort from the hot weather 
here, whatever the folks inland and in the 
big town may do ; for, however oppressive 
the day may threaten to be, about ten o'clock 
each morning a deliciously cool north-west wind 
uprises, coming to us over endless stretches 
of the blue Atlantic, freshening us and making 
existence quite tolerable in our carefully shaded 
rooms. 

We " study to be quiet " during the hottest 
part of the day ; and the clear, tender, early 
morning hours and dewy, fragrant evenings 
are compensation enough. Moreover, we have 



SUMMER TIME 79 

certainly found that a non-meat diet tends to 
keep the blood cool and pure ; rendering one 
able to endure the heat with a far less amount 
of discomfort and ill-effect than carnivorous 
people seem to experience. 

How novel and beautiful it would be to be 
rich ! Really rich, with sufficient money not 
merely to live out the remainder of our span 
of life on this earth in simple comfort and 
dignity, but to possess that pleasant margin 
which gives one the power to be generous to 
others, to express in material form those warm 
impulses to aid and to give joy which are so 
checked and stifled by the lack of means to 
consummate the natural desire. 

Ascetics may say what they please — it is 
a had thing to be poor ; and the virtues that 
one is supposed to acquire through the cold 
pinch of poverty would be at least equally 
developed in the same temperament by a 
moderate share of the sunshine of prosperity. 
Selfish and unamiable rich people would be 
selfish and unamiable poor ones ; a tender 
heart would not be rendered hard by the power 
and practice of benevolence. 

The limitations of poverty ! How much 
one misses through the hampering inability 



80 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

to give proof of one's kindly feelings ! How 
many friendships can never reach fruition, 
and how subtly misunderstanding and estrange- 
ment can creep in — because one chances to 
be poor ! 

It may be due to my Irish blood that to me 
it has ever been the keenest delight to give. 
It certainly can never be accounted to me for 
a virtue, for the impulse is so absolute and 
inherent that to act differently — ^to count the 
cost and prefer to keep things for myself — is 
honestly the effort, not the first desire. One 
of my earliest theological difficulties arose 
from this very trait. 

" But which pleases God the better," I de- 
manded of my then earthly Providence, one 
night at hair-plaiting time, " if we do good to 
others because we enjoy doing it, or because 
He tells us to ? " 

I don't remember what the answer was, but 
I know that it was unsatisfying, and that I 
cried quiet, miserable tears during the re- 
mainder of the hair tweaking ; for I was 
yearning with all the earnestness of which my 
child soul was capable to please a " jealous 
God," and I felt that I could not render Him 
the necessary sacrifice of painful self-abnega- 
tion, because it was only after all a natural 



SUMMER TIME 81 

pleasure to me to give and to be spent for 
others. 

Even here and now, I am happy in having 
a protege. 

When we first came here I used to be daily 
distressed, in passing the outbuildings where 
our peasants herd, by the sound of a plaintive 
monotonous wail, " Ehu, Jesu ! Jesu, Ehu ! " 
repeated over and over again, beginning as 
soon as I came into view, and continuing until 
I was long out of sight. I used to glance in 
as I passed the dark open door, from which 
the cries proceeded, but the sunlight was so 
vivid without, and it was such a black, window- 
less hole, that I could discern nothing within ; 
and I began to find the moans slightly irritating, 
from the fact that they appeared to be uttered 
solely to impress me ; for I found that when I 
was not supposed to be within ear-range, there 
was silence, or sometimes a quite cheerful voice, 
and even an occasional cracked laugh issued 
from that dark interior. 

But then, I realised that, after all, it was very 
natural. The poor inmate, whoever she was, 
had no other way of attracting my attention ; 
and in the living death which she must be en- 
during in that cheerless den, a chance of outside 
help or interest was to be sought by any means. 

6 



82 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

I consulted The Philosopher, who made in- 
quiries for me, and found that it was Miguel's 
old mother, paralysed and bed-ridden, who 
occupied the room. 

" You had better not go in," he advised. 
" It will only upset you. And you can do 
nothing." 

That was what worried me : I could do 
nothing. If only I had some little delicacies 
to take her, or a warm blanket for her poor 
withered limbs, I would so gladly have run. 
the risk of being " upset." But to go empty- 
handed ! Yet those cries must have some 
response. What could I do ? I puzzled over 
it for days, and then bethought me of our one 
luxury — our tea. 

So that afternoon I took down a big cup of 
hot, well-sugared tea — real " English " tea — 
and so made acquaintance with the poor, 
yellow, wizened creature, lying huddled under 
a cotton covering, on a sort of broad wooden 
shelf, in a dim, dirty room, made cold and un- 
wholesome by the damp, and of which the 
sole furniture was a rickety old deal table 
propped beside her. She was paralysed all 
down one side and quite helpless, and my first 
efforts to raise her to take the tea were not 
very successful, but deftness came with 



SUMMER TIME 83 

practice ; and though my slender knowledge of 
the language and her toothless speech make any- 
converse between us difficult, we understood 
each other from the first, through a language 
which is of all countries and all time — her 
helplessness and my pity for her. 

Now, every afternoon, when I pour out our 
tea, I take a cup to " the old senhora," and 
each time she greets my entrance with the 
same remark : ''A senhora nao se esquece ! " — 
the senhora never forgets. And she stretches 
out her one poor skinny arm to seize my hand 
and draw it to her lips. Then she tells me 
the day's woes, in words the meaning of which 
I can only guess, of her daughter-in-law's 
neglect, of the lamentable thinness of the cab- 
bage soup they bring her, of the throes of 
rheumatism which rack her old bones, and I 
reply, " Yes, yes ; pobre, pohre ! " — poor, poor 
one — and give her some sympathetic little pats, 
and bid her farewell until next day. 

Whether she really enjoys the strange foreign 
beverage I bring her, or whether her gratitude 
is only another instance of the charming 
manners of this people, I do not know ; at 
any rate, she likes the thin slices of white bread 
which accompany it, and which, dipped in the 
tea, slip easily between her toothless gums. 



84 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

But lonely and neglected though she may 
be through three hundred and sixty-four 
long days of the year, the old senhora has 
her one day of consequence and honour, 
when the priest comes to hear her confession, 
and to administer The Host to her in her 
dark room. 

One bright spring morning I was awakened 
by the approaching sound of many voices 
joining in some solemn choral or chant. Nearer 
and nearer the voices came, until they paused 
beneath my window, and peering very cau- 
tiously out, I beheld the priest entering the 
farm, clad in his vestments, and bearing the 
Holy Office, followed by candle-bearers and 
a small crowd of peasant girls and boys carry- 
ing flowers and sprays of fennel. 

Later, I found the courtyard strewn with 
trampled roses and the feathery branches of 
the bitter herb ; and the old senhora 's door 
was closed throughout the day, that nothing 
might disturb her pious meditations. 

Whether she was cheered or not by the great 
ceremony I could not discover, but she was 
certainly filled with a gratified sense of im- 
portance ; and that afternoon she tried to 
tell me a great deal regarding purgatory, but 
unfortunately I could not understand much, 



SUMMER TIME 85 

and the little I did I could not agree with ; 
deeming, indeed, that the poor soul was en- 
during her share of that state here and now, 
and that the light and joy of heaven itself 
might well come next — for her, at least. 



CHAPTER IX 

BIRTHDAY EGOTISMS 

July 18. 

I AM reminiscent to-night, and with right and 
proper cause, since it is my birthday. What 
mortal is there who, however prosaic he may 
pride himself he has become in the course of 
long, soul-destroying years, does not experience 
a faint, secret sentiment, a certain wistful 
glance backwards, on that anniversary ? I 
frankly own that the recurring day is like no 
other to me ; I revel in its mingled memories 
of sweet and bitter things ; I range from child- 
hood's days down through years of happiness 
and effort and storm and stress to the peaceful 
present ; and, looking ahead, I speculate which 
day of all the year will prove itself to be that 
other pre-determined anniversary which is 
now drawing nearer and more near. 

Whenever I pass through a certain portion 
of south-west London — a region lying between 
the King's Road, Chelsea, and Hyde Park — 

86 



BIRTHDAY EGOTISMS 87 

Time exists not for me : I tread amongst the 
unreal, and a strange metamorphosis takes 
place. The huge blocks of luxurious flats and 
the streets of stately mansions fade unsub- 
stantially away, and I see again the small, 
unpretentious houses, with the open spaces 
between of fields and market-gardens, which 
gave a half-rural appearance to that pleasant 
suburb a generation ago. The air seems 
clearer, fresher ; lilacs, laburnums, and roses 
flourish in the old-fashioned gardens ; and a 
slow horse-'bus, with a carpet of clean, rustling 
straw and a door, starts from the " Queen's 
Elm," and rumbles along the Fulham Road, 
to take us " into town." Where now great 
houses form some misnamed " Gardens," a 
long, low factory extends, fronted by a wide 
stretch of waste land, in which are high sand- 
hillocks, huge logs of wood, and boulders of 
stone, and a disused well half hidden amongst 
the long rank grass. A wild place, which 
was the delight of our child hearts ; where 
many an adventure culled from the pages of 
Fenimore Cooper and Marryat was played 
out, in summer sun and winter snow, on dark 
nights lightened by evil-smelling toy bull's-eye 
lanterns, or on bright June mornings before 
the sluggard world was astir. 



88 A SHADOWED PAKADISE 

On one such morning our mother was 
aroused by an insistent knocking, and hastily 
putting her head out of the window she met 
the upward gaze of the night policeman, not 
yet off duty. 

" Beg pardon for disturbing you, mum ; 
but do you know where your children are ? '* 

" Good gracious, man ! " cried our mother, 
" why, in their beds, of course ! " 

" Well, you go and see, mum, that's all / 
say," stolidly responded the scandalised guar- 
dian of law and order. 

Our mother rushed upstairs in alarm, to find 
a row of small white beds — empty ; and, hastily 
arousing the nurse, she began a frightened 
search. No trace of us in the house ; no sign 
of us in either garden ; but, round a corner, 
hung on a spreading lilac bush, four little white 
nightgowns fluttered in the summer breeze, 
and four happy small pink savages on the war- 
path in search of scalps were tearing about in 
the high grass of the adjoining field, flourishing 
long spears of lilac shoots and whooping 
joyously. 

I wonder whether any people in the big 
houses which have arisen above that wild 
hunting-ground are ever half so careless and 
happy as were those little savages of long ago. 



BIRTHDAY EGOTISMS 89 

It was there that, one winter, being bored 
by the society of dull elders indoors, we started 
to build ourselves a house where only bright- 
ness and make-believe should have residence. 
We dug painfully in the frost-bound earth to 
make sure foundations for the doorway ; but, 
alas ! our heavy wooden door-jambs would 
weakly decline from the perpendicular, in 
spite of all our stamping and hammering of 
the soil around them ; so we waived the pre- 
sent necessity of building walls, and hurried 
off to spend our combined stock of pocket- 
money upon paper and paints to adorn them 
with — when raised ! 

I have memories of long days spent in the 
old Museum, amongst the pictures, where, 
at the age of ten, I aspired to copy Cassandra 
Prophesying the Fall of Troy — a large canvas 
with at least a hundred figures ; of blissful 
fireside hours, when I learnt to worship Shake- 
speare and love Dickens, and to roam with 
Cooper and Marryat and Scott through hair- 
breadth adventures in enchanted lands ; of 
dreamy summer hours, swinging with some 
book of poems in the boughs of a gigantic 
laburnum tree, with above and around me a 
bower of sunshine formed of the drooping 



90 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

golden blossoms, and the blue sky glimpsed 
between. 

Such was my education — to run wild, with 
pictures and books and a garden. There are 
many worse systems, if the growth of a child's 
soul in its natural individuality is desired ; 
but if not, then the method should be shunned, 
and the child sent to one of those framing in- 
stitutions, where the mould is identical for all, 
where any individuality is discouraged, and 
perfectly correct specimens are turned out, 
finished into a colourless perfection, and fitted 
in every way to contribute their quantum to 
the dullness and monotony of ordinary middle- 
class existence. 

As for me, I think I have my manner of edu- 
cation to thank that there are two tyrants of 
to-day from whom I have ever prayed to be 
delivered — Cant and Convention. The first 
draws a veil of mystery over Things as They 
Really Are, confusing their outlines, making 
the Essential of no account, and glorifying the 
Superficial ; exalting words over spirit. The 
second binds us hand and foot, that we may 
not tear aside the lying folds in our search for 
Truth. And few of us dare to protest ; be- 
cause to be original, to act otherwise than one's 
fellow-mortals, and to do what has not received 



BIRTHDAY EGOTISMS 91 

the sacred cachet of Custom, is to commit a 
social crime. 

I am a whole twelve years old. I am alone 
in the garden in the soft summer darkness. 
Over the roofs of the farther houses a dull glare 
in the sky shows in what direction the great 
city lies. I am still in a world of make-believe. 
In my white birthday frock with its blue sash 
I am Valentine in Monte Crista ; on the other 
side of the thick lilac-hedge waits Morel, my 
most worshipful lover ; I know that if I were 
to thrust my hand through one of the gaps of 
greenery it would be seized and imprisoned 
in his own. My heart flutters unevenly 
with the exquisite consciousness of his pre- 
sence ; the warm wind cannot cool my flushed 
cheeks. 

Suddenly, across the roofs, the hush is 
broken by a solemn, slow voice of intensest 
melancholy. Big Ben, from his lofty watch- 
tower, strikes the hour, and in his deep, ma- 
jestic notes is voiced all the poetry, aye, and 
the misery, the sin, and the madness of the 
city's inmost heart. My make-believe falls 
from me, and I stand lonely, a shivering child 
in the darkness. Around me, borne on the 
vibrations of the bell, hover mighty unknown 



92 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

forces which are bringing to me the strange 
coming mysteries of Life, of Birth, and Death. 
The Spirit of My Future rustles his wings, and 
I cross my hands on my childish bosom and 
strain my eyes in an endeavour to peer into 
the Unseen. 

But it is not wholly with fearful apprehen- 
sion that I quiver ; for some secret pulse throbs 
with a prescience of future high adventure, 
and the soldier-blood of my father's people 
is stirred within me in a resolve to face and 
to conquer Fate. The darkness becomes holy, 
each quick-drawn breath a prayer ; and when 
the last whispering echo of the final " boom " 
has died away, I turn my gaze to the stars 
and brave my Destiny, bring it what it may. 

Unchildlike, you say ? Ah, how few " grown- 
ups " realise the " long, long thoughts " of a 
child, and the vague memories and foreshadow- 
ings which cluster round that little soul as it 
stands hesitating upon the threshold of its new 
existence ! 

From these mists of childish recollections 
there stands out clearly one small, gracious 
figure, the guardian angel of my later girlhood. 
A little old lady, dressed always in black silk, 
with smooth pink cheeks, brown side-curls un- 



BIRTHDAY EGOTISMS 93 

touched with grey framed in a black lace cap, 
and with the clear, gentle voice and the sprightly 
walk of a young woman. The years had not 
petrified her ; she possessed a fund of quiet fun, 
and a love of all things beautiful and seemly. 
She rarely talked Religion, but to be with her 
was to dwell in an atmosphere of goodness and 
right thinking. Her heart was tender to all 
living things, and her life was spent in doing 
unobtrusive kindnesses. Her judgments were 
unprejudiced and generous, but there was in 
her just a morally bracing touch of austerity 
akin to the first tinge of frost in the air 
on some perfect autumn morning. Unselfish, 
unruffled, gentle, altruistic, if she had brought 
on any faults to old age my keenly critical 
child-eyes never discovered them. 

It was her lot to spend her whole life in a 
little, sleepy provincial town. When others ad- 
ventured abroad it had always been her part to 
remain at home to preserve that gracious order 
which seemed to follow from her mere presence 
in the house. So sleepy a town was it, and so 
stodgy grew the brains of its inhabitants from 
lack of outside interests, that it was no unusual 
thing for people to become, " Not mad, my 
dear, but — just a little queer, you know." 
One good lady grew so bored by her life of 



94 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

monotonous comfort and the unrelieved society 
of her meek little husband that she one day 
took to her bed, and firmly and resolutely de- 
clined to get up again. And although in perfect 
health, there she remained for many years 
until One whose summons would not be denied 
shifted her to a resting-place in the church- 
yard. 

But no such mental atrophy overtook my 
dear one. Though, in her narrow sphere, in- 
tellectual stimulus was difficult to find, she 
found it — ^in Egyptology ! Every book that 
she could procure on the subject was perused 
with eager delight. Egypt's wondrous past — 
the history, the hieroglyphics, the excavations, 
the discoveries — ^were all of absorbing interest 
to her ; she realised and visualised it all, and 
had no mean knowledge of the vast subject, 
though I doubt whether she had ever seen so 
much as a worthy picture of the country — cer- 
tainly never any of the treasure-trove of col- 
lectors or of the museums. 

And secretly, too, she wrote : hymns and 
sweet, calmly reasoning little religious essays 
on dainty sheets of lady's note-paper. No one 
ever saw them during her lifetime, but I 
treasure them now, when the note-paper is 
yellow with time and the ink is fading away. 



BIRTHDAY EGOTISMS 95 

To me they are sacred reflections of a pure 
and perfect personality, of a life as delicately 
fragrant and as unobtrusive as the faint scent 
of lavender and rose-leaves which lingers still 
about the pages. 

Life's landmarks ! The things that count — 
the episodes that mould the soul, that make 
us different. How strange and erratic they 
are, and how little are they the obvious, to-be- 
expected influences of our daily existence ! 

Looking back, I believe the thing which has 
had the most far-reaching results in my life 
was the sight of an unknown woman's face. 
I glimpsed it one dull winter's day in the 
crowded Strand. My omnibus drew up against 
the curb, and the woman, passing by, paused 
on the muddy pavement and turned her face 
towards me. Such a face ! A yellow, fixed 
mask of absolute despair : apathetic, dead, 
save for the suffering concentrated in the 
sunken, lustreless eyes. Her shoulders were 
relaxed listlessly forward, and her clothes 
hung upon her with that indescribably forlorn 
air which garments take when they are uncon- 
sidered and uncared for. Though I was un- 
known to her, I recognised her as one of 
a pioneer band of thinkers and reformers of 



96 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

the day, and from afar I had admired and 
watched her noble public life. 

She turned now and looked at me, and 
strangely, but surely — surely — from the depths 
of those colourless eyes there leapt a sudden 
appealing flash : the voiceless cry for help 
of some creature tortured beyond endurance. 
It momentarily stirred the calm of that terrible 
mask as she inclined towards me. 

But I, shy, incredulous, hesitated. I was 
obscure and unknown ; had I been but her 
intellectual equal, with what gracious warmth 
I would instantly have responded to that 
silent appeal. So — I hesitated — and the instant 
passed. My 'bus moved on, and she turned 
to pursue her way. 

I saw her once, twice, thrice afterwards, that 
winter ; but never again did the mask lift. 
Then, one day, London was startled by the 
tragedy of her self -sought death, and I ex- 
perienced the bitterest remorse I have ever 
known. That one moment of appeal — if I had 
but responded ; if I had but put out my hand, 
and said, " You are suffering. I'm sorry ; I 
care. Oh, share it with me ! " who knows 
but that just the love and sympathy of a sister- 
woman might have broken up the ice of despair 
and saved her life. For she was so solitary in 



BIRTHDAY EGOTISMS 97 

her trouble — I learnt long afterwards that she 
wrote entreating a friend in the country to 
come to her, but some cause made that im- 
possible, and she went down to death alone. 
It all happened years ago, but it made an 
ineffaceable impression upon me, and never 
have I forgiven myself for that moment of 
unworthy irresolution, when I missed my 
chance to help another human soul. Since 
then I hope I have not so erred, at whatever 
cost to myself. That neglected opportunity 
has avenged itself many times over ; it has 
borne its part in the shaping of my life. 

Once, years ago, it was my lot to make a 
great renunciation. The details would be of 
no interest to the world ; it is sufficient that 
to me there seemed no other course possible. 
All that had previously made up the sum of 
my existence had to be relinquished, if I was 
still to walk with my forehead to the sky. I 
was forced to choose — I chose ; and if that 
bitter crux were again before me, my choice 
would have to be the same. But it is no light 
thing for a woman to put herself wrong with 
her world — to go out into the wilderness — 
however pure her motives, however inevitable 
her action may be. The familiar trappings 

7 



98 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

of Life are rudely torn away, and things and 
people assume unwonted aspects. It occa- 
sions a crucial sifting of the gold from the dross, 
the superficial from the real, in herself and in 
others ; and there follow some strange sur- 
prises. For myself, I found that my most 
merciless critics — those whose censure was 
severest and whose charity was of the scantiest 
— were those who could not bring themselves 
to forgive past benefits, and those who by 
right of their own lives were the least fitted 
to sit in the judgment seat ; whilst the good 
people understood with scarcely any need for 
explanation and none for justification. 

Especially did I find this the case with strong, 
noble women. One, as kind as she was dis- 
cerning, kissed me tenderly and said, " My 
dear, you were placed in a most cruel position, 
but — ^you did the right thing ! And the only 
shame that can ever touch you will be if you 
should ever come to be ashamed of having 
done it." Through all the dark days that 
followed, when the flesh, being weak, cried 
out for aU that was not and could never be 
again, those brave words were at once my 
benediction and a source of strength. And 
Shame and I never met ; but Charity and 
Faith and Tenderness gathered round me, and 



BIRTHDAY EGOTISMS 99 

bore me in their arms over the sharp stones 
of that steep path of Renunciation into the 
quiet by-ways of Peace. 

And that Peace remains, even now, when 
Life seems leading down into the dark Valley 
of the Shadow. The premonition of tragedy 
which was voiced by the great bell on that 
long-ago birthday indeed fulfilled itself : pain, 
loss, followed high endeavour ; when I willed 
good, evil was present with me ; and the 
wounds which pierced the deepest were dealt 
by hands I had blessed. But — I have found 
the " precious jewel " of adversity, and in 
the desert one can hear God's voice as one 
cannot in the crowd ; and when life is shorn 
of the superficial the real becomes very clear. 

A clock strikes the midnight hour as I lean 
from my window out into the still beauty of 
the night. Pure, pale moonlight floods all 
the fair scene ; a faint, subtle fragrance of 
pine-needles, of bay, and of myrtle hovers in 
the warm air. The waves are stealing softly 
to and fro upon the shore, and the croak of 
the frog colony down at the spring is just 
audible in the distance ; while from close at 
hand, in the old gravel quarry beside the 
house, the silence is sharply cut by a silvery, 
metallic, " Clink ! Clink ! " — clear and sweet 



100 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

as some tiny bell or glass hammer — insistently 
repeated. The " fairy blacksmiths " are at 
work, and the night is the richer for their 
notes. 

I cross my hands upon my bosom, and 
looking up into the depths of the violet sky, 
where the myriads of stars hang suspended 
in the ether, once again I brave my Destiny. 



CHAPTER X 

THE POST OFFICE BABY 

I HAVE always found that one of the results 
of life abroad is an abnormal and insatiable 
desire for letters from England, and for all 
home news, even of the most frivolous descrip- 
tion. 

Never, when in London at the heart of 
things, did I know or care half so much about 
the affairs of my nation and of the world at 
large as here and now, when, as far as any of 
the home doings affect me personally, I might 
be in another dimension. The Philosopher, as 
befits him, rather scorns my newspaper wor- 
ship, preferring that I should dwell ever upon 
the hill-tops with the serene giants of old, 
than that I should be so feverishly interested 
in Lloyd George's fight for his Budget, or should 
pore over the review of the last new play or 
novel, or care whether the King is at Balmoral 
or Marienbad. But alas for The Philosopher's 
ideals ! I am a modern to my finger-tips, and 

101 



102 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

I cannot help being keenly alive to the affairs 
of the moment, although, as he truly says, 
all these things are mere ripples on the surface 
of the waters of Time — Vanitas, Vanitatum ! 

So it is chiefly for my pleasure that we have 
The Times Weekly Edition and T.P.'s Weekly 
sent to us through a London newsagent, and 
many times have we gravely reasoned that it 
is an unjustifiable extravagance, and debated 
whether we ought not to do without one 
or both ; but I have always pleaded for the 
retention of this link between us and the dear 
old homeland ; and since even philosophers 
cannot be expected always to be consistent 
— how much less philosophers' wives ! 

The Philosopher is a much more genuine 
Citizen of the World than I, who share puss's 
attachment to old associations ; but then, I 
am a mere woman, and must be permitted the 
weaknesses of my sex. He, indeed, will thrust 
his letters into his pockets unopened, and will 
only remember to read them when he haps upon 

their crumpled remainders. Whilst I ! 

In a house where we stayed in Venice once, 
there was a maid who, rather than I should 
be so disappointed, would bring me the letters 
addressed to the other English visitors, and 
could never be made to understand that it 



THE POST OFFICE BABY 103 

was not quite the same thing, and did not 
console me as she intended. 

Here, even in Paradise, I am always hungry 
for home letters and home newspapers, and 
were it not for very shame each day would 
see me mounting the stairs which lead to our 
village post office. For we have to seek our 
letters here ; no postman's " rat-tat " sounding 
at regular intervals upon our doors marks the 
progress of our day. There is a legend of a 
postman who delivers letters — charging two- 
pence each — during the summer " bathing 
season," when native visitors pervade our tiny 
village ; but if he exists, he has never dis- 
turbed our quiet nor assailed our purse : we 
are probably outside his radius. 

Our postmistress is a dark-eyed little lady, 
with pretty manners, and when first I invaded 
her room, proffering my wistful demand for 
cartas, she was, as Dickens was so fond of 
saying, " in that condition which all ladies 
who truly love their lords desire to be," and 
she would sit with folded arms, sunning herself 
on a chair outside her door, complaisantly 
smiling upon her little world. Then, one day, 
when I called, and, finding no one within, 
ventured to rap on the counter, and after a 
reasonable interval to rap again, I was con- 



104 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

fronted by a frenzied and reproachful little 
husband. Letters ? Who could be thinking 
of letters at such a time ! These incon- 
siderate English ! No, no ; there were no 
letters ! I properly abased myself, and went 
away, feeling a brute. But all went well ; 
and when my craving for home news drove 
me there again, a proud and happy little mother 
was nursing a most precious morsel of humanity 
at the telegraph table, while its other parent 
bustled about, showing his satisfaction and 
increased sense of importance in every fiercely 
bristling hair of his black moustache, and the 
very cock of his tie. Since then the post 
office has been run by Her Majesty, The Post 
office Baby. If we chance to call during that 
important person's siesta, and ask for our 
correios in our usual tones, we are checked by 
reproachfully lowered voices ; rattles and toys 
look quite at home upon the official counter : 
the young lady partakes of nourishment at 
nature's fount before us all, and falls asleep 
lulled by the ticking of the telegraph trans- 
mitter. One hot morning I was even per- 
mitted to tip-toe into the sacred precincts and 
secure my precious budget from its pigeon- 
hole myself. Juanita was just dropping off 
to sleep after her bath and breakfast ; the 



THE POST OFFICE BABY 105 

little postmistress could not be expected to 
move. No one would dream of calling without 
inquiring after the welfare of the little lady, if 
she chances to be absent, or interviewing her 
and courting her smiles when she is present. 
She has inherited her mother's pretty dark 
eyes, and is really a dear little soul. 

On one of our brief absences from home, when 
The Philosopher, brutally oblivious of the 
baby's existence, had merely written to re- 
quest that our correspondence might be for- 
warded, we received the following sweet reply : 

" Most Excellent Senhor, — 

" You can please rest quite happy and 
careless that all your correspondence shall be 
sent where you wish it to be. How is your 
most excellent senhora ? My daughter and 
both of us are very well. Always at your 
disposition remains 

" Your very attentive and devoted 

" X." 

The italics are my own. But what a re- 
freshing amount of simple, kindly human nature 
there is in these dear people ! And what would 
dry, animated officialdom at St. Martin's le 
Grand think of a post office run on these homely 
lines ? 



CHAPTER XI 

SICK-ROOM SOLACE 

I SUPPOSE everyone has some specially favourite 
book : some silent friend that to him is con- 
genial as many more brilliant or profound ac- 
quaintances are not, and that grows only dearer 
to him with age. I have known men who have 
carried everywhere with them a well-worn 
pocket Horace, or Marcus Aurelius ; there is 
a certain thumb-nail fragment of Shakespeare 
which lives always in The Philosopher's waist- 
coat pocket ; and when I was a schoolgirl I 
remember a senior who invariably prowled 
about in recreation-time with a fat, dingy old 
dictionary under her arm, the perusal of which 
she preferred to the most exciting novel of Mrs. 
Henry Wood or Ouida. A certain literary 
journal has recently been asking its readers to 
state what work they would severally choose 
if they were fated to be stranded upon a desert 
island with only one book to lighten their 

106 



SICK-ROOM SOLACE 107 

solitude. The replies were in some cases sur- 
prising, but no doubt perfectly honest. 

I have lately been stranded upon my desert 
island. I have been ill, and doomed to spend 
long days of painful weariness in bed at a small 
hotel here ; and, as in the mythical case, I 
have had but one book to bear me company 
— Edward Carpenter's Towards Democracy. 
What a book of strange power it is, and what 
an unfortunate title ! A title bound to raise 
instinctive prejudice and an instant feeling of 
distaste in the minds of so many who could 
best appreciate its mystic contents. It is a 
title unreasonably suggestive of the dogmatism 
of the half -educated and illogical, of super- 
ficial and flashy remedies for vital ills, of the 
deeply rooted antagonism of class, and the 
strife of opposing parties. And thus, as beauty 
may be hidden behind a repellent mask, so 
the worth and scope of this noble book will go 
unrecognised by many on account of its name. 

Had I had the baptism of it, I think I would 
have called it The Book of Life. Any lesser 
definition of it is too small ; it is a grand, un- 
trammelled Poem of Life — ^the Life which ex- 
tends from the Before we entered upon this 
little phase of existence, on into the Beyond 
to which we are all wending ; a recognition of 



108 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

our repeated births and experiences upon our 
way upward, nearer and ever nearer to The 
Great Heart of the Universe. 

Truly it contains the grandest ideal of de- 
mocracy in its demand for the discarding of 
all shams, all smooth hypocrisies, in its in- 
sistence on the Brotherhood of Humanity, and 
of the sacred duty of the strong to succour the 
weak — the true noblesse oblige. It expresses 
the divine compassion of those who have fought 
and gained the mastery, for those who are still 
in the arena, combating the animal and the 
gross ; the recognition of the future angel in 
the lowliest creature, and the all-pervadingness 
of God ; so, underneath all discords of this 
world, the keynote — Joy. It shows the pos- 
sible detachment of the Ego from the things of 
time and sense, the realisation of the episodical 
nature of our sojourn here, and the wisdom of, 
a bright looking forward and upward. 

But apart from his noble message to his age, 
what a wonderful word-painter Carpenter is. 
The thousand exquisite thumb-nail pictures — 
each perfectly delicious, with not an unneces- 
sary phrase ! With him I have been able to 
forsake my hot, dull sick-room, leaving behind 
me the white-washed walls and bare-boarded 
floor, the monotonous outlook of a square 



SICK-ROOM SOLACE 109 

white chimney and a corner of red-tiled roof, 
glaring in the sun, with its background of in- 
tense blue sky, and, forgetting the myriads of 
teasing flies, the pain, the weariness and un- 
freshness of everything, I have flown with him 
to perfect moments such as these — 

" The sower goes out to sow, alone in the 
morning, the early October morning so beauti- 
ful and calm. 

" The flanks of the clods are creeping with 
thin vapour, and the little copse alongside the 
field is full of white trailing veils of it ; 

" While now, like a flood the rising yellow sun- 
light pours in, among the brambles and under 
the square oak-boughs, and splashes through in 
great streaks of light over the ploughed land." 

I am in the dear homeland again, as I lie 
dreaming over the picture : I smell the up- 
turned red earth, I see those films of vapour 
moving and vanishing in the sun's first rays. 
Ah, the blessed refreshment of it ! Again — 

" The thrush sings meditative high in the 
bare oak-boughs — while the still April morning 
just drops with faint rain, and the honey- 
suckle climbs snakelike with green wings 
among the underwood ; 

" The voice of the ploughman sounds across 



no A SHADOWED PARADISE 

the valley, and the cackle of the farmyard 
mingles with the rumble of a distant train on 
its way to the great city." 

And then — 

" The sun withdraws his rays ; the many 
shadows are merged into one ; 

"The sweet odour of the white campion comes 
floating, and of the wild roses in neighbouring 
hedgerows, and of the distant bean-fields ; 

" Twilight comes, and dusk comes, and the 
height of the sky lifts and lifts ; 

" The last of the long daylight fades " 

I will be even cooler. I will be carried 
where — 

" The winter woods stretched all around so 
still ! 

" Every bough laden with snow — the faint 
purple waters rushing on in the hollows, with 
steam in the soft still air ! 

" Far aloft the arrowy larch reached into 
the sky, the high air trembled with the sound 
of the loosened brooks." 

I lie motionless now ; no longer have I the 
distressful necessity to twist and turn and 
fidget : peace has come to me, and the heat 
and the flies are forgotten. Imagination stirs 



SICK-ROOM SOLACE 111 

with pleasant interest ; my winged book shall 
take me farther afield. I flutter its pages. 

" I am a long-eyed Japanese. In the shadow 
of the sacred thicket I lie — where the great 
seated image of Buddha (hollow within for a 
shrine) breaks above me against the blue sky. 
The sharp shadows lie under his sleepy lids 
and soft mouth smiling inwardly. I see on 
his forehead the sacred spot, and from between 
his feet the emblematic lotus springing." 

Then— 

" The broad Italian landscape spreads below 
me — the lands of the upper Po and Bormida ; 
I see the wave-like congregated hills terraced 
with vines to their very tops, the pink or yellow 
painted homesteads dotted here and there, 
the arched stone barns, and villages clustered 
on the hill-tops with belfries high against the 
sky. . ." 

Ah, Italia benedetta ! Shall I never tread 
thy sacred soil again ? Shall we never again 
wander, happy tramps, where — 

" The Campanile and red roof of the village 
church show out seaward against the sky-line ; 
and the cypresses stand sentinel in the cemetery 
on the hill above ; 

" The borage-flowers beneath the lemon 



112 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

branches catch the hues of sea and sky ; runnels 
of water sparkle through the grass by the path- 
side ; the scent of orange-bloom is in the air ; 

" Far back into the valleys stretch the grey 
shade and gloom of the olive-yards ; and the 
narrow, tumbled alleys of the mountain- 
villages are like huge rock-burrows of human 
beings ; . . ." 

" The zigzag path, the lonely chalet, the 
patches of cultivation almost inaccessible, 
the chestnut woods, and again the pinewoods, 
and beyond again, where no trees are, the 
solitary pasturages ; 

" (The hidden upper valleys, bare of all but 
rocks and grass — they, too, with their churches 
and villages ;) 

" And beyond the pasturages, aye beyond 
the bare rocks, through the great girdle of the 
clouds — high in air — 

" The inacessible world of ice, scarce trodden 
of men." 

A sob rises in my dry throat. The awaken- 
ing memories of Italy are too bitter-sweet. 
We have been so happy there : we have loved 
her too well. I should not have strayed back 
to her now, when I am seeking peace and not 
to feel ! 



SICK-ROOM SOLAOE 113 

But my book falls open at another page, 
and I glance at it through my tears. 

" Let your mind be quiet, realising the beauty 
of the world, and the immense, the boundless 
treasures that it holds in store. 

" All you have within you, all that your 
heart desires, all that your Nature so specially 
fits you for — ^that or the counterpart of it waits 
embedded in the great Whole, for you. It 
will surely come to you. 

" Yet equally surely not one moment before 
its appointed time will it come. All your 
crying and fever and reaching out of hands 
will make no difference." 

Somewhere in the little street below a caged 
bird is singing : a blithe sweet twitter of free- 
dom and happiness. With the cruel custom 
of these southern lands its captors have pro- 
bably blinded it, that its song may be more 
constant. But not of darkness nor of cap- 
tivity nor loneliness is that song : the brave 
tiny throat pulses and trills out wild woodland 
memories of love and lightness and joy. 
Higher and higher its notes rise 

My eyes close ; the book falls from my 
hands. I will be — I am — content. 

8 



CHAPTER XII 

ON THE SHORE 

I AM out of my prison at last, under the broad, 
blue, summer sky, faint but happy in the sun- 
light. All the long delicious morning I have 
lain amongst the great rocks — rugged monsters 
bare of seaweed, huge russet-brown boulders, 
interspersed with inlets and lakes and pools, 
where the tide creeps up, and in, and out, and 
stretches of sand where the foam from the 
spraying waves floats madly along in froth- 
bubbles borne on the wind. Before me, over 
the farthermost rocks, the ocean is having 
wild sport, dashing up at their jagged tops, 
splashing and breaking over the dark crests 
in fine, broken clouds of snow-white spray, 
falling in frothy cascades down their sides, 
withdrawing for a brief instant, only to form 
a higher curve of wave to rush back again to 
the attack in wilder, merrier force. 

Even when there is no wind, the far-heaving 

lU 



ON THE SHORE 115 

Atlantic swell — offspring of the distant storm 
— flings itself untiringly against these barriers 
of sand and rock in breakers such as are seldom 
seen on English shores ; but to-day the breeze 
is fresh and strong, and the farthest blue is 
tipped here and there with " white horses," 
then, in the nearer distance, where the rocks 
are not, roll the broken lines of noble waves, 
transparently perfect in curve beneath their 
foaming fringe, exhilarating to behold from 
their ceaseless energy, their glorious strength 
and freshness. 

The wind, though high, is balmy, healing, 
friendly ; the great, beneficent sun irradiates 
all the fair scene, and, lying here like some mere 
flotsam on the shore of Life, health steals back 
into my veins and I am filled with a feeling 
of quiet joy. It is so good, only to be alive 
to share in this festa of Nature's ; and what- 
ever day of the week this chances to be, it is 
serene and blessed Sabbath in my heart. 

I idly wonder what, exactly, John the Be- 
loved meant, when, in painting his grand word- 
picture of his Jewish Heaven, he wrote, " and 
there shall be no more sea." If ever there was 
a place where one might expect to hap upon 
the souls of the blessed, it would be here — 
gliding serenely about the brown old rocks, 



116 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

holding sweet converse in the silent coves, 
or floating in blissful lightness on the snowy 
wave-crests ; here on the marge of the ocean, 
the element so free, so fresh from God's hand, 
so unspoilt and unspoilable by man's defiling 
touch. 

Perhaps, exiled and lonely, he was thinking 
of it only from the point of view of — 

"The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea ! " 

And then, indeed, I can understand his 
meaning. For poor souls, whose hearts ache 
through a long lifetime for dear ones parted 
from them by the awful spaces of ocean, who 
strain longing eyes across the waste, extending 
empty, hungry arms, to them what strange 
sweetness, what unutterable comfort there 
must lie in that mystical assurance — 

" There shall be no more sea ! " 

I am able to walk again, and for some 
bright hours to-day The Philosopher and I 
have been a pair of happy, careless chil- 
dren, scrambling about amongst the great 
rocks, sliding down chasms, leaping perilous 
waterways, peering into deep, wave- worn 
pools amongst the huge boulders, where tiny 
fishes shyly dart in and out, and sober crabs 



ON THE SHORE 117 

lurk, and beautiful anemones of blue and 
crimson and brown fringe the sides ; and then, 
weary and blissful, we settled down at length 
in a sun-dried cleft of a great dark rock, and 
The Philosopher started to work, whilst I, as 
a pampered convalescent, rested in idleness, 
feasting my eyes upon all the fresh beauty 
of spraying wave and calm blue sky, and 
mused, and mused 

Until, suddenly, my mood changed, and the 
sunlight seemed blotted out. 

How strange it is to know so surely that 
we have just so many more days of this beauti- 
ful life : that slowly, slowly but inexorably, 
the time is stealing nearer when we shall have 
eaten our last bean, spent our last reis, and the 
hour will have struck for us to go out of this 
world. We are happy in the sunshine still, 
but the shadow creeps silently, remorselessly 
on, nearer, ever nearer 

For a moment my arrested heart antici- 
pated its chill, its horror, and I quailed and 
shrank. Life is so sweet ! If it were but 
possible to wait for the natural summons to 
depart hence ! I have never been of those 
who shrink from Death, who dread the secret 
it has to disclose ; rather have I felt a bright 
anticipation of the Future beyond it, and the 



118 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

probable wider faculties. Judging it to be as 
natural a thing as birth, and so utterly a thing 
in which we are the helpless puppets in stronger 
hands, I have felt that we are surely safe, and 
that we can be content to be passive, waiting 
meekly for the hour which has been fixed for 
the Turning of the Key in the Lock, the slow 
swinging open of the Door, the gleam of the 
Light Beyond welcoming us encouragingly 
as we falter on the threshold. But that is a 
different matter to oneself battering upon 
the closed portal, violating that dread Lock, 
rushing in unbidden, prematurely ! 

What a strange, unequal world it is ! That 
there should be those who have so much more 
of the metal with which one buys comfort here 
than they can possibly enjoy, and others, who 
need such a little measure, are forced to die 
for the lack of it. 

I remember reading of two people, a year 
or two ago — she was an artist and he a writer — 
and when, like ourselves, they were worsted 
in the struggle they threw to the hungry 
waiting world two last sops — she a little book 
upon her art, he, his bitterly gained advice 
to literary beginnners. But the callous world 
wanted none of their pathetic efforts ; it cried, 
" Amuse, amuse, or — cease to trouble me ! " 



ON THE SHOKE 119 

So the Inevitable came for them, and they went 
out. The Philosopher and I are in like case 
to theirs. What wares have we to offer that 
the world would care to buy ? Unfitted by 
temperament, by health, by custom, to barter 
and wrangle and fight in its market-place, 
there is no possibility left for people such as 
we when money is gone. One must confront 

the truth. And yet 

I looked up into that dearer face beside me, 
and The Philosopher, glancing down in re- 
sponse, asked me quickly whether I was cold. 
No, not cold, I responded, but bored — just 
bored by my thoughts. If he would read 
aloud to me, a little of his grave, wise book, 
I should be all right — all right ! 

Evening. I am myself again now ; the 
coward mood has passed. "It is not well to 
think of death, unless we temper the thought 
with that of heroes who despised it." I have 
remembered Socrates, going to his death with 
such unruffled calm : his sonorous, unflinching 
last words to friends and enemies alike, " The 
hour of departure has arrived, and we go our 
ways — I to die, and you to live ; but which of 
us has the better part, is known to God alone." 

Ah, that better part may after all be ours : 



120 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

to pass out in silence now, rather than to 
linger on, losing courage, dignity, indepen- 
dence — ^perhaps even coming to accept a 
grudging charity. I will flinch no more ; I 
will be staunch, brave, and careless. 

Years ago, at a little chalet-hotel on a Swiss 
mountain-side, a strange woman shared our 
table one night. She was an Austrian, gaunt, 
middle-aged, unlovely ; alone on a walking 
tour through the Alps. Before the meal was 
over she had confided her story to us. She 
was doomed to blindness ; the specialists had 
given her just so many months before the dark- 
ness would close in upon her irrevocably ; and 
she was spending those last brief months of 
vision in seeing all that she could of the beauties 
of the world, so that, when the dread time at 
length came, her blankness might be relieved 
by the glories which memory would summon 
to her aid. Pictures had become but a blur 
to her, stately buildings were now confused 
and indistinct, music neither charmed nor 
soothed ; she could no longer read, and her 
nerves were strung at too high a tension to 
endure a voice reading to her ; but the green 
solitudes of those Alpine valleys had power 
to bring peace to her soul, the distant snowy 
peaks were somehow comforting and clear 



ON THE SHORE 121 

to her strained vision. When I inquired for 
her on the morrow, it was to learn that she 
had passed upon her solitary way at sunrise ; 
but she left me the richer for her example of 
quiet heroism. God send her solace now, 
when the end must long have come to her ! 

I have thought of a hero too. A little red- 
headed fellow, who, with the superciliousness 
of girlhood, I judged to be neither interesting 
nor extraordinary. But he had his moment. 
It came one day in the Australian bush when 
his companion's gun accidentally exploded 
and he was shot. He looked up smilingly 
into the face of his friend, who knelt beside 
him, frantic with grief and self-reproach. 
" Sorry, old chap," he whispered. " Like 
my damned awkwardness — ^getting in the 
way ! " — and died. 

Now, how dare I flinch or repine ? 



CHAPTER Xin 

SUMMER INCIDENTS 

A QUEER and incongruous incident is hap- 
pening just now. The most ancient mode 
of locomotion and the most modern in- 
dustrial impulse have united ; a great quiet 
reigns in the ruas of our big town, and the 
roads leading to it are strangely peaceful 
and deserted — the ox-carts have gone out 
on strike ! 

Women carry piecemeal upon their heads 
the loads which the carts usually convey ; 
crude little hand-trucks have suddenly sprung 
into being ; everything is disorganised, for — 
the ox-carts are on strike. 

It appears that their primitive wheels do 
great damage to the roads, as, when the cart 
requires to turn, it necessitates a heavy drag 
round of the whole concern by main force — 
each wheel being rigidly attached to the axle — 
and the town authorities have issued a mandate 

122 



SUMMER INCIDENTS 123 

that, for the future, all carts entering the town 
must have their wheels moving independently of 
each other, on penalty of a fine. But many of 
the ox-cart owners are very poor, and the cost 
of making the required alteration would mean 
much to them ; hence this protest. Also, 
apart from any consideration of cost, there 
is the essential underlying spirit of the country : 
The old ways have always done well enough, 
why should they be forced to change ? Their 
fathers did not have independent wheels to 
their carts, why should they be expected to 
do so ? It is but another proof of unjusti- 
fiable tyranny ! I have little doubt that the 
poor government gets the credit for the hateful 
innovation. 

Later. After much excitement and infinite 
talk the strike has ended as so many efforts 
at reform end here ; it has proved but a damp 
firework, which has fizzled out ignominiously. 
The old rigid wheels grind along the roads 
again ; it was inconvenient to everybody to 
be without the service of the ox-carts, so no 
more is said about the new regulation ; and 
when one questions an ox driver, he just 
shrugs his shoulders in good-humoured irre- 
sponsibility, and drawls, '' Eu nao se!"" — I 



124 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

don't know ! and nobody troubles any more 
about it. 

These southern races are blissfully exempt 
from the baleful influence of the Work-microbe ; 
and the manner in which we more strenuous 
northern races fret and worry and bustle about 
our business concerns would seem most strange 
and unreasonable to them. It is, after all, 
just a matter of climate. Where Nature is 
so kindly, the sun and the earth so beneficent, 
one's wants are fewer, life is simplified, and 
nerves and brain are more content to rest 
and be contemplative. 

In the Canaries I had a stout criada who, 
when I made a request, would smile ex- 
asperatingly, and, folding her fat arms above 
her ample stomach, would placidly reply 
" Manana ! " — " Manana " there, " Amanha " 
here, to-morrow ! — ^that is the true southern 
spirit. Plenty of time to-morrow : why trouble 
to-day ? But one of the English shipping 
firms endeavours to counteract this un-English 
point of view amongst their employees, and 
over the big white face of the office clock 
is the stern admonition — do it now ! 

On a certain day last week, when I was busy 



SUMMER INCIDENTS 125 

in a little wooden shed in the garden, though 
apparently alone, I was aware of a gradually 
increasing consciousness that some one was 
watching me. I turned, looking down, and 
there, sitting up on its haunches, with one arm 
extended to steady itself against the jamb of 
the doorway, was the wisest and most intelli- 
gent-looking of toad-persons, observing me 
intently. He seemed quite unconcerned at 
my interest in him ; rather assuring me by 
his gaze that it was reciprocal. So I sat him 
on the palm of my hand and took him indoors 
to interview The Philosopher. He was such a 
self-possessed and unusual toad, and we were 
so charmed with his air of calm, unprejudiced 
wisdom — the placid outlook of a sage so in- 
terested in observing Life that he feared 
nothing — that we concluded it would be de- 
lightful if he would share our domicile, and 
live henceforth secure from danger of dogs 
and children. So we made him a dark cave 
of crumpled brown paper in a corner, and 
introduced milk and bread-crumbs for his 
delectation. 

But the next morning, after greeting him by 
the affectionate name of the " Old 'un" and 
leaving him serenely observing his surroundings 
from the mouth of his cave. The Philosopher 



^ 126 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

was called away to interview a peasant woman. 
The big door was standing open while a long 
and animated discussion took place upon some 
trivial point — as to whether eight days should 
be counted as a week, or some equally en- 
tangled problem — and when he returned the 
wise toad-person was nowhere to be seen. We 
hunted everywhere, but discovered no trace 
of him, and we had at last reluctantly to con- 
clude that he had preferred to decline our 
hospitality and had slipped off through the 
open door and down the steps. But, as the 
story-books say, there was a sequel. 

We have been troubled by the visits of mice 
lately, and though we do not begrudge the 
little creatures a small levy upon our supplies, 
they had become really outrageous in their 
depredations, bringing up from the farmyard 
each night fresh relays of " their sisters and 
their cousins and their aunts " to share in their 
orgies. So at length, with firm resolution, 
The Philosopher went off to the town and 
brought home a trap of the guillotine variety, 
with a strong spring to bring down instant 
retribution upon the neck of any brazen robber 
venturing over its threshold. When night 
came he baited it and set it down in a dark 
corner of the kitchen. 



SUMMER INCIDENTS 127 

" Now we shall soon see ! " he announced 
grimly, as we sat down to supper. 

" Sss-nap ! " sharply went the trap before 
we had finished our beans. 

" There ! " cried The Philosopher, in tri- 
umph. " You see — already 1 " 

And he went off to inspect. 

" It's an uncommonly large mouse," he 
cried doubtfully, peering into the corner in 
the semi-darkness. 

Then, gingerly lifting the trap, he brought 
it into the range of the lamp-light, and there, 
suspended by one leg, was the poor batra- 
chian ! 

He had evidently lived for the intervening 
days hidden under the big dresser, venturing 
out each night in search of stray crumbs, and 
so the fate of the robbers had overtaken him. 
We wondered what they thought of him, and 
he of them, when they chanced to meet in 
their maraudings in the quiet hours of the 
night. 

Eager to make atonement for the insult we 
had so unwittingly offered him, we carried 
him down to the frog-pond in the moonlight, 
and there bade him a reluctant farewell, 
leaving him to be nursed back by Dame Nature 
to the enjoyment of his freedom with his own 



128 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

people, in a corner amongst the reeds, where 
he could avenge himself for his enforced vege- 
tarian diet of crumbs by succulent meals of 
young frogs. 



CHAPTER XIV 

QUIET DAYS 

The days glide by in such pleasant monotony, 
with so little to mark their course, that the 
recurring Sundays take us by surprise, and 
the sound of the exordium and prayers of the 
weekly beggar beneath our windows in the 
dawn often alone, proves to us that another 
week is ended, another one has begun. Our 
only other Time-marks are a few days of better 
health, and of feverish work, for The Philosopher, 
followed by a fresh relapse into languor and 
insomnia, when I steal about our little house 
on tiptoe, grieving for unprocurable comforts 
for him ; short lashing rain-storms between 
long days of sunshine, clear air, and blue sky ; 
serene moons, and soft, dark nights of stars ; 
and the time steals by with as fatal a facility 
as these grains of white sand slip from between 
my fingers — ^it will almost as soon be ended. 
When I awake now in the grey dawn of the 

129 9 



130 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

morning, my gradual return to consciousness 
is suddenly postulated by a sharp, overpowering 
sense of dread. My heart is momentarily 
arrested, then bounds forward with the hurried 
beats of a sickening and nameless fear. Reason 
has not yet assumed control, and I suffer hor- 
ribly. The most frequent torment of this 
" dawn-mare " is the sensation that we are 
falling, falling down some precipice ; we seek 
to clutch at its smooth sides, we grasp some 
treacherous weed or yielding clump of grass — 
in vain ! Voicelessly, helplessly, we are sinking 
down into the void, and there is none to out- 
stretch a saving hand. 

This waking dream never reaches the in- 
evitable catastrophe, there is no finality — only, 
ever and always, this paralysing, deadly grip 
of fear : the despairing horror of the falling, 
never the passive quiet of The End. 

If I could but attain to The Philosopher's 
sweet serenity, both for himself and for me ! 
If I did not love this present Life so dearly, 
if my blood did not pulse in such intensity of 
sympathy with all human doings — with Love, 
knowledge, mirth, and beauty, with pain and 
sorrow and even sin — it might not be so hard 
to go ! 



QUIET DAYS 131 

This morning I had a beautiful new experi- 
ence : I assisted at a birth. The sunshine 
to-day is the richer for a tiny lovely creature 
over whose nativity I was privileged to pre- 
side. A week or two ago I chanced to find 
a queer little cocoon, and brought it indoors 
with me. It was an uninteresting little object, 
of a dull grey, undistinguished in form, and, 
when I touched it, its more pointed end gave 
a feeble wriggle of protest. I carelessly put 
it up on the ledge of a picture frame and forgot 
all about it. But this morning, before the 
sun had risen, when I was busy at my table, 
something fell from above almost into my 
hands, and there was the little grey cocoon, 
but animated now with strange internal con- 
vulsions. The blunt end of it was slightly 
open ; the length of it was very gradually 
cracking open from the force of the efforts 
within. Presently a head, consisting mostly 
of two great startled eyes, appeared, then a 
couple of quivering antennae sprang forward 
into their position from the restraint of the 
shell ; two slender front legs were next drawn 
from their prison, and clutched on to my hand 
for assistance in their weak struggles for free- 
dom. I ventured to hold the tapering tail-end 
of the shell, and, assisted thus, the cracks 



132 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

gradually went on until a queer, unhappy 
little creature had freed itself entirely from 
body and wing cases, and sat on my palm 
looking strangely forlorn in a great new world. 
Its wings were all crumpled up at its sides, 
useless and confused ; it seemed numbed with 
the keen morning air, and quite unready to 
take up life on its own account. I placed it 
under a glass upon a window-sill where the 
sun would soon come, and went about my 
concerns. In an hour or two, when I remem- 
bered it, what a transformation the warmth 
and light had brought about ! The crumpled, 
useless wings were widely outspread — bright 
golden-yellow in the sunshine — or folded up- 
wards together like two hands at prayer ; the 
creature was all animation, impatient to start 
upon its new life of enjoyment. I lifted the 
glass. For an instant it paused irresolutely, 
doubtful, perhaps, of its untried powers ; then 
the beautiful golden wings quivered and opened, 
and fearlessly, rapturously, gaining strength 
and control with each movement, it fluttered 
off into the sunlight of the new day. What- 
ever memories it retained of its former earth- 
bound state must have been of the vaguest 
description. It seemed akin to the death- 
birth of a soul into heaven. 



QUIET DAYS 133 

I have been reading once more the tragedy 
of the Carlyles. What a pitiful picture it is 
to contemplate ! That intellectual giant, after 
all his strenuous, heroic years of splendid work 
for his kind — grand work accomplished in spite 
of narrow circumstances, ill-health, and a 
hampering personality — spending his last years 
in pathetic repentance for his supposed neglect 
of his life's companion. And what a want of 
judgment and humanity, all the petty, un- 
necessary revelations prove. I can imagine 
Jane Carlyle's burning eyes turned upon the 
revealer in bitter scorn. " And thank you for 
nothing, James Froude ! " she would have 
cried, could she have known how her Philo- 
sopher's old age would have been embittered, 
and his fame after death darkened, for the 
sake of "doing justice to her memory." 
Whistler's wonderful portrait tells the whole 
sad story — the sorrow, the seK-reproach and 
humiliation — more truly than any words can 
do, and there the matter should have been 
decently buried. 

Mrs. Carlyle was no meek saint. She 
grumbled, she suffered, indeed ; but I doubt 
whether, had the choice been given her, she 
would have been content with any lesser lot 
for the sake of greater happiness or ease. She 



134 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

stood between her Philosopher and the world ; 
she recognised his genius, and it was her high 
privilege to " give him his chance." She 
heroically consented to go to Craigenputtock 
that he might have the leisure he needed to don 
his armour for the fight, and to test its metal ; 
and though her restless spirit may have chafed 
at the loneHness and narrowness of her Hfe 
there, I think she must have felt that Sartor 
Resartus was worth it all. True women do 
not marry to tread henceforth a path of roses, 
but to share with a chosen comrade in all the 
struggles of Life. To dare, to sufiPer — to 
endure pain, loneHness, neglect even, if so 
they may help that other one. This is a 
nobler fate than mere happiness. As the 
Sage himself said, " There is in man a 
HIGHER than Love of Happiness : he can do 
without Happiness, and instead thereof find 
Blessedness ! " 

This " Blessedness " satisfies a woman's 
nature as the selfish seeking for her own pleasure 
never can ; and it is this spirit of joyful self- 
sacrifice which places marriage without the 
pale of ordinary criticism. In all true wife- 
hood there is an element of the Mother-love ; 
tolerant, tender, protecting ; at times, perhaps, 
even a spice of amusement ; but always, and 



QUIET DAYS 135 

in everything, a loving comprehension. And — 
Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner. 

Some wise man once said, " There are but 
two people who can tell the whole truth of a 
man and a woman's relationship — and they 
won't." Personally, I beHeve the two dear 
creatures quite understood each other, and that 
there was honey beneath the vinegar for them 
both. Peace to their troubled memories ! 



CHAPTER XV 

THE ETERNAL FEMININE 

We are experiencing a season of wet, unpleasing 
weather. All day our sea lies still, grey and 
sullen, just showing a fringe of white teeth 
near the shore ; and from the south-west the 
great billowy clouds roll up, dark with their 
burden of rain, which ever and anon descends 
in a heavy downpour, keeping us prisoners 
in our little fortress behind the streaming 
window-panes. Along the sodden road an 
occasional disconsolate peasant passes, en- 
veloped in his queer mackintosh composed 
of layers of long dried grasses, appearing Hke 
a small perambulating haystack ; or a woman 
patters along barefooted, with her skirts tucked 
high, and her thick woollen shawl drawn closely 
over her head ; otherwise all are sheltered in 
their cottages, for these southern races hate rain. 
The Philosopher, whistUng happily, is ab- 
sorbed in reproducing a copy of his beloved 

m 



THE ETERNAL FEMININE 137 

Turner's " T^meraire," and, wrestling with the 
intricacies of that gorgeous sunset, he is ob- 
livious of leaden skies and lashing rain. There 
is much to be said for colours in such weather 
as this. 

I, less fortunate, a devotee of the bald printed 
page, have been poring over first some novels 
of the French school, and later, some of the 
plaints of the women of our day, and I am 
fittingly depressed by both. The fleshly school 
invariably arouses in me a perverse spirit of 
antagonism. The " field of vision " is so out of 
focus ; it gives to one side of life such a dis- 
proportionate importance. Love is good, 
passion is good, but so is a very great deal else 
in life, and when books such as these, written 
by women in most cases, claim to be serious 
psychological studies of Woman, I would sug- 
gest that there is a flaw in their titles ; that 
it is not Woman with the capital W who is 
here dissected for our doubtful edification, but 
a woman ; or say, five, ten, twenty women — 
neurotic, super-sexed, self-absorbed women. 
Like poor Melisande, they " are not happy," 
and in these books they are presented in the 
nude, proclaiming their wants, their vague 
desires, their discontent to all mankind. 

It is all so chaotic, premature, unbalanced. 



138 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

What do they wish ? What do they lack ? 
That woman's position is in a transitionary 
state no thoughtful person can deny. Pro- 
gress and education are affecting her con- 
dition, as so much else. She has had her 
day as a goddess, she has had her day as a 
serf ; and now the last shackles are falhng 
from her limbs ; she is stirring, rising, but 
with spasmodic, unmodulated movements. 
She does not yet know in what Hes her strength, 
in what her weakness ; and nothing but the 
beneficent action of Time will draw her to 
the gradual true reaHsation of herself. 

In the early days of CathoUcism woman's 
sensuous nature had its vent in the forms 
and mysteries of voluptuous worship. The 
sexual instinct was sublimated. The Mother 
with her Child was upon the altar, " and 
every woman became holy in her womanhood, 
and wrong and harshness towards any child 
a sacrilege." When the Puritan revolt came, 
man placed his wife, daughter, sister in the 
Mary's empty niche, and thenceforth saintly 
purity and sexlessness was exacted from 
every woman. But woman found a difficulty 
in breathing this rarefied air ; she revolted in 
secret, whence came the excitement of witch- 
craft, real or imaginary, its whispers of bestial 



THE ETERNAL FEMININE 139 

devilment and hysterical horror. Woman fell 
from her pedestal into the mud of the market- 
place ; her divinity was gone for ever. Then 
came a dreary level, when man drank hard, 
and had not " rounded Cape Turk " ; and a 
" good " woman was accounted by him as 
one without individuahty, humdrum, tedious ; 
a colourless companion for his bed and board, 
to be his sick-nurse and his housekeeper, but 
no sharer of his thoughts or pleasures. An 
Ameha, ever melting into the facile tears of 
sensibility ; a patient Griselda perhaps, but a 
very trying one ! We have many graphic 
portraits of her ; her " genteel " delicacy of 
health, her nerves, her swoons, her apathetic 
submission, not necessarily to a beloved mate, 
but to a man whom she chanced to call hus- 
band ; ever prating cold Duty as her sole 
incentive, taking all the festival of marital joy 
listlessly, even complainingly, in an aggra- 
vatingly martyr spirit. Such women as these 
were indeed calculated to transform the " cakes 
and ale " of marriage into "cold baked funeral 
meats " ; and it is good to know that their 
day is over. 

But of what consists the ideal mate ? I 
think that from a man's point of view she is 
no new production ; we have all bowed before 



140 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

her shrine in history, poem, and song. She 
is the woman — the primeval woman — who 
loves deeply, devotedly, warmly, self-effacingly ; 
whose passion flows straight from her large 
heart, with more than a spice of Motherhood 
in its protecting tenderness ; one who would 
do and dare and suffer all things for the 
beloved man. Not necessarily a clever woman, 
except in the things that pertain to the heart, 
but a woman whose love warms without 
scorching, and whose mere presence brings 
comfort and peace, upon whose bosom heroes 
may rest. Of such was Hero, and Juliet, and 
little Lucy Feverel. 

Even this ideal, however, is changing with 
the times, and the true woman of the future 
will be one who is capable of as much warmth, 
as boundless devotion as her primeval sister, 
but one who will have clear eyes of criticism ; 
who must love downwards, from the brain 
to the heart ; a woman who will demand that 
her reason shall assent to her emotions ; dis- 
tinctly not the type carelessly to fling her 
cap over the windmills, and count the world 
well lost for Love ; but her love, once won, 
will be capable of making Hfe heaven for the 
beloved man. 

Strangely, some most modern|women have 



THE ETERNAL FEMININE 141 

assured me that, deeper than the desire for man's 
love is their yearning towards Motherhood. 

In an old number of the long-defunct 
Savoy there occurs a pathetic little story of a 
girl. Just an insignificant little attendant 
in an A. B. C. off Cheapside, who dully accepted 
the fact of her own unloveliness, and lived on, 
a lonely atom in the great city. Men were 
not attracted to her ; men did not attract 
her. Yet at the bottom of her very ordinary 
girlish heart there was ever an inarticulate 
want, a yearning, a sense of unsatisfied hunger. 
At length there came a time when there 
sprang up a whimsical and quite unsenti- 
mental friendship between the girl and a man, 
a customer ; and in the new experience she came 
to realise the need of her poor, empty heart. 

" I think," she said softly, "if I had a 
baby, my very own, I should want nothing — 
nothing in this world more than that." 

The idea is beautiful, in this pure sense, 
but — is it true ? Is there not rather a wide- 
spread revolt against maternity amongst an 
ever-increasing section of women ? Few have 
the genius for Motherhood ; fewer still would 
desire the condition except as the outcome 
of deep marital love, which renders the off- 
spring precious. 



142 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

Others make a strong plea for early marriage. 
They assert that a girl from fifteen to twenty 
is in her prime for marriage. It may be so, 
if the sex-faculty is the chief end of love and 
marriage, as too many books of the day 
imply. In less complex days it may have 
been true ; one ventures to doubt whether 
it is so now, I think, in a modern marriage, 
it is more essential for lasting happiness that 
the man and woman should be thoroughly 
good comrades, " chums," with thoughts and 
points of view in common, than that they 
should be unreasoningly consumed by a 
grand passion, any more than the faculty of 
eating, drinking, or sleeping should absorb us. 
Life is now too interesting, too full of many 
things, and satiety gives the natural He to 
this pernicious doctrine ; and it is this in- 
tense, morbid accentuation of sex and the 
sex-faculty which gives an unpleasant savour 
to so many modern books. 

And surely there is something illogical, un- 
sound, out of proportion in the theory. Passion, 
unless sanctified by being the last test and 
highest inspiration of individual Love, is 
but an emotion which we share with the 
brute creation ; and its satisfaction without 
the spiritual transmutation of Love, either 



THE ETERNAL FEMININE 143 

in marriage or out of it, is a prostitution of 
man or woman. It is not an instinct to be 
brooded over, accentuated by morbid imagina- 
tion, screamed out to the world. 

When in God's order, and, thank Heaven 
I can still beHeve, in Woman's order, it follows 
in the wake of a great and holy love, as natur- 
ally as the sunlight follows the dawn, it leads 
on to maternity and joy, and there is nothing 
to be said to the gaping world. Even when 
it is the outcome of an unhappy love, in 
man or woman doomed ever to be mateless, 
if one could probe the depths of the lonely 
heart, I think it would not be unsatisfied 
passion which would be found to cause the 
bitterest pangs. 

I once knew a woman, — she is long since 
dead. Peace to her soul ! — to whom Love 
came suddenly, silently. It was a love never 
destined to fruition, and she bore it hidden 
deep within her heart through all her years. 
Yet, though no one held the key to the secret, 
that hidden love dominated her whole future 
existence, and perfected her character, so that 
all men saw the change in her. The hard grew 
easy, since the beloved one lived ; her life 
was a difficult one, but her courage never 
failed ; she could smile at all that Fate could 



144 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

do to her, since, somewhere, he breathed God's 
air ; she held all things with a Hght hand ; 
it was easy to be unselfish, to seek the good 
of others, and nothing unworthy could be 
spoken or done, since it would withdraw her 
soul farther from his in God's sight. She 
was of a nervous temperament, but one 
thought of that hidden love had power to 
brace her to a perfect self-control. 

The Religion of the Beloved ! It was strange 
to watch. Yet, stranger still, this woman 
was uncommonly clear-eyed ; she held no 
illusions regarding him, but she looked beyond 
the imperfect man to the soul as God had 
made it, and — she loved him. To have 
suggested that there was aught of passion in 
that love would have seemed like desecrating 
a shrine. Even if Destiny had been kinder 
he might never have roused that side of her 
nature ; it slumbered deeply, it had never 
been awakened. Yet — indeed she loved him. 
Well — she died, with her secret undiscovered ; 
and now he too has passed on, and they are 
both forgotten. After all, at best we but 
grasp a comrade's hand in the darkness ; 
perhaps, beyond, in the light of heaven, those 
two souls may look into each other's eyes 
and understand. I believe that the highest 



THE ETERNAL FEMININE 145 

love is above and beyond all mere sex. David 
had dim knowledge of this truth when he 
mourned for the one who had loved him with 
" a love passing the love of women." And, 
" In heaven they neither marry nor are given 
in marriage, but are as the angels of God." 

And those whose lot it is to be celibate 
have this consolation, that marriage is but 
a small matter after all. The individual, 
distinct life of the soul is the great thing to 
be striven for ; that it may grow — ^broad, 
free, and worthy of its high destiny. If, 
perchance, it may be our lot to join hands 
with a congenial comrade, so much the better ; 
but Life is not marriage, nor child-bearing, 
nor brief ecstasy of sexual union, but the 
growth of the soul. For we take not hus- 
band nor wife nor child out with us when we 
go hence, but pass out into The Unknown ; 
solitary, alone, even as we came hither. 

For distressful Woman — ^her salvation must 
come from within. No one can help her, 
no outward " rights " really aid. It is char- 
acter, character alone that can raise her to 
the noble heights for which she is now half- 
blindly groping. Educate, elevate, make calm, 
strong, wise ; and the rest will follow, as the 
light the day. 

10 



146 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

As Joubert wrote, " Make Truth lovely, 
and do not try to arm her — mankind will 
then be far less inclined to contend with her." 

Perhaps, one day. Woman may come to 
realise, with a great surprise, the fact which 
has lain hidden all the time, that her de- 
liverance is thus. Let her only make herself 
wise, tender, strong, well-poised in all things 
pertaining both to heart and brain ; neither 
borne along by wild gusts of hysteria, nor 
confusing the shadow with the substance ; 
deeply realising that in the attainment of 
her highest hopes, " in quietness and con- 
fidence " shall lie her " strength." Not by 
clamour, nor by spasmodic, iU-directed force, 
nor by antagonising Man ; but by quiet, 
resistless proof of her fitness for the greater 
by her perfect fulfilment of the less. The 
waiting time may be long ; but even as 
leaven silently, surely, leavens the whole, so 
Man's judgment will be won, his sense of 
justice aroused, and what he would not 
render to coercion he will freely yield up 
to worth, and will seat Woman to reign 
beside him on the throne of the World — ^no 
longer a goddess, a slave, or a puppet, but 
an acknowledged equal, a counterpart, and 
a completion. 



THE ETERNAL FEMININE 147 

Dear, dear ! How rainy weather makes 
one prose ! 

The rainy spell is over, and all nature 
is rejoicing in the sunshine once more. 
We have taken our chairs and our work 
into the disused gravel quarry beside our 
house, and there, delightfully shielded from 
the north and the east, we sit sunning 
ourselves amongst a thick growth of gorse 
and brambles and baby pines. The warm 
air is alive with tiny midges, the strands of 
fine spider's web glint in rainbow tints from 
bush to bush, and a big, contented humble- 
bee — a " yellow-breeched philosopher " — is 
bumming his deep Te Deum around us, 
while a stray working bee, coaxed out from 
his winter rest by the brightness and warmth, 
is hovering about the golden gorse blossoms, 
in search of a sip of nectar. Away from the 
sun, through the clump of pines behind the 
quarry, the sky is an intensely deep, soft 
blue — a true southern tint — and although it 
is late autumn, I require no jacket, and lounge 
luxuriously in my deck-chair, with my panama 
tilted over my eyes. 

In front of us, beyond the common, stretches 
the blue, scintillating sea, dotted here and 



148 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

there with tiny fishing smacks, whose big, 
picturesque sails of burnt umber, and Vandyke 
brown, and dull red, add a pleasant note of 
colour to the scene. There will be espadilhas 
for our supper to-night ! 

It is all too blissful for me to be strenuous. 
My book falls into my lap, and I am content 
only to enjoy. Whimsically, to deepen my 
content, I picture the London streets to-day : 
the heavy, leaden-grey atmosphere, through 
which no ray of sun can pierce, the muddy, 
unlovely thoroughfares, the blue-nosed, shiver- 
ing, hurrying crowds, the straining of the 
laden horses along the greasy roads, the 
rattle and ill-odour of the huge omnibuses ; 
the noise, the feverish unrest, the sordidness 
and futility of so much of the ejffort ! Now, 
had I but the cap of Fortunatus, I would 
wish that all those in the unhappy multitude 
who would appreciate beauteous nature, and 
warmth, and rest, might forthwith be trans- 
ported to this Elysium, to taste with us the 
blessedness of the simple life, and for once 
to realise " the things that matter." 

The Philosopher, to whom I have voiced 
this altruistic wish, looks vaguely doubtful. 

" Well — a few at a time," I concede. 
" A chosen few ! " 



CHAPTER XVI 

AUTUMN 

When I awoke this morning and looked 
out as usual, the tide was low, the sea 
calm and swarming with the boats of the 
fisher-folk, all engaged in some mysterious 
occupation. In an hour or two they had 
disappeared, and presently the ox-carts came 
creeping along the road, laden with millions 
of tiny crabs with which to manure the maize- 
fields. The poor little crustaceans are scattered 
over the ground, and then ploughed alive into 
the soil, waving feebly protesting claws. 
The odour of the fields for weeks afterwards, 
especially under the strong rays of the mid- 
day sun, reminds one of a double concentration 
of bad cod-liver oil, and their neighbourhood is 
to be shunned by those of sensitive nostrils ; 
but they seem to make excellent manure, 
and their use is general here. 

There is a beneficent sense of autumn in 

149 



150 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

the air, the skies are a clear blue, the sun 
shines mellowly, and a gentle freshness in 
the breeze makes all activity a delight. 

These simple folk are now engaged in 
reaping the harvest of their long, laborious 
days. The maize is all cut or being cut ; the 
great sheaths containing the grain are severed 
from their tall stems, and girls and children 
squat before the cottages and in the courtyards 
deftly shelling the heads of maize from these 
coverings ; after which the grains are flayed 
out of their cones with primitive wooden 
flails — long sticks with revolving beaters — 
and spread to dry in the sun upon the open 
stone floors which are attached to each home- 
stead. When the sun has wrought this last 
good work upon them, they are stored in 
huge white wooden chests, and the family 
food for the coming year is assured. There 
it lies, secure to hand ; naught to do in the 
winter days when meal runs short, but for the 
mae to take a small sack of the grain upon 
her head and away to the miller's to get it 
ground. Then, once a week or so, there is 
a great baking of maize-bread ; heavy, un- 
fermented, but apparently wholesome and 
satisfying ; and the milho also forms the 
foundation of their bean and cabbage soup. 



AUTUMN 151 

Unfortunately for our purse The Philosopher 
and I cannot learn to enjoy maize in any form ; 
but it is a valuable food, richer in fat than 
wheaten flour, and for that reason we occa- 
sionally conscientiously include it in our soups. 

The uses of this wonderful cereal are not 
ended with the gathering of the grain. All 
the dried grassy leaf parts are trimmed from 
the long cane-like stems and collected into 
neat little stacks in the fields, to supply the 
winter fodder for the oxen. Dry, unnourishing 
fare it appears to my ignorant eyes, but the 
great patient beasts chew it up appreciatively 
each morning and evening, and their good 
condition and capacity for long labour prove 
its hidden virtue. 

Thus man and beast are fed from the little 
patches of maize-fields, and the tiny crabs 
go down now into the alien element to make 
next year's crop rich and succulent. 

And for those so poor as not to possess or 
to rent even the smallest strip of land on 
which to grow this national food, the form 
which rural charity takes is usually a mugful 
of the grain, emptied into the beggar's patch- 
work bag ; and, going thus from door to 
door on Sundays and festas, these unfortunates 
can collect quite a considerable quantity. 



152 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

Sown between the maize-stalks for shade 
and support, are the beans which form the 
only other staple food of these simple children 
of the soil. These also are picked when ripe 
and dried for winter use. Thus, with the pines 
all around to supply wood for fuel, with the 
pine-needles and pine-cones for kindling, with 
the gorse and bracken to serve for litter, 
with often a pig, or goat and fowls, and the 
maize and the beans grown together on their 
little patches of land, for food for themselves 
and the cattle, with the grapes from their 
cottage pergolas serving to make a thin, 
sour wine, and often paying their rent in 
kind, these country folk scarcely seem to 
know the need of money or shops. I am no 
political economist, but I do sometimes wonder, 
watching their free, simple, hardy lives, 
whether this is not the happier lot, and high 
wages and town existence a mistake. 

An advantage of our " Walden " is that it 
does not matter what clothes one wears. 
Here, in the country, where one rarely sees 
any shoes or stockings other than one's own, 
where rags are treasured even when they are 
most weather-stained, mossy and threadbare, or 
in strips, causing their ser^neljr unselfconscious 



AUTUMN 153 

wearer to resemble nothing so much as a lively 
scarecrow, even one's oldest garments are 
regarded by the people as strange and luxurious 
possessions. But it was reserved for a certain 
ancient scarlet wool tam-o'-shanter which 
I love and cling to, to confer the height of 
distinction upon me. 

To-day, after a sedentary morning's work 
at our several tasks, we were swinging along, 
up our Happy Valley, laughing and singing 
snatches of songs, as our childish custom 
is when we are in the woods, when we 
were recalled to more suitable behaviour by 
the peculiar regard of a small boy whom we 
chanced to meet. His jaw fell, he stood trans- 
fixed, staring at me with a wide-eyed, awe- 
stricken gaze. Especially did he seem to be 
overpowered by the sight of my head covering. 

" Well, rapas;," inquired The Philosopher 
encouragingly, " what's the matter ? " 

The boy, with his eyes still fixed on me, 
drew a step nearer to him for protection, 
hesitated, and at length, in an awed whisper, 
faltered out : " Is — is the senhora The 
Queen ? " 

That Portuguese word " rapaz " always 
appears to me a delightful term for " boy." 



154 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

" Bapaz " — " rapacious " — how it hits off the 
exactly suitable definition of the normal 
young peasant animal ! And the other day 
I happed upon a perfectly delicious word for 
our term " quack," — " matasanos,^^ which, 
being literally interpreted, means " kill-the- 
healthy ! " A nation using such words must 
really have a sense of quiet, dry humour ! 

All day yesterday Miguel was busy gathering 
the ripe clusters of grapes, which, with their 
dark purple bloom, depending from amongst 
the broad green leaves, have for weeks past 
made our farmyard a veritable place of beauty 
— overhead, if not below ! 

Our vines are old and uncared for ; their 
thick twisted stems climb the walls, here 
and there, of the out-buildings which surround 
the yard, and above, upon flat supports of 
wood and wire, they spread their branches 
across and interlace their tendrils, forming a 
complete shade from the glare of the sun, 
while permitting a soft green light and a 
sufficiency of air to percolate below. 

Yesterday these branches were despoiled 
of their generous yield of fruit, and in the 
evening we were privileged to witness the 
ancient process of " treading the wine-press." 



AUTUMN 155 

Miguel, with his trousers rolled up to his 
thighs, stood bare-footed in a huge wooden 
tub, wherein the great bunches of purple 
grapes were heaped. Then he began a mono- 
tonous, high-stepping tread, gradually crushing 
all the fruit beneath his feet. The juice, 
thus pressed out, began to fill the tub, and 
the stalks and skins to become things of minor 
importance, doomed later to be strained 
away. For an hour or more he continued 
his treadmill performance. It did not look 
an inviting process, nor did the turgid, greenish 
fluid which resulted tempt our thirst. But 
to-day he came to our door, bearing a Gar- 
gantuan mug of sparkling, transparent light 
crimson juice, which, with the addition of a 
little sugar, tasted really good. This is the 
fermenting stage : later on it will not appear 
so attractive to our English palates ; and 
when it is ready for bottling, it will be darker, 
and very acid — the " vinho verde " or " green 
wine " of the peasantry, which, I believe, 
is quite wholesome ; though we decidedly 
prefer the " vinho maduro^'' or " ripe wine." 

Whether it is that the humble berries 
ripen at a season when the national fruit, 
the grape, is so plentiful that even children 



156 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

and beggars can feast their full, or whether 
there is some traditional prejudice against 
them amongst these country folk, I have not 
discovered, but, though the high hedges of 
our lanes are now crowded with a wealth of 
the biggest and most luscious blackberries, 
no one seems to appreciate Nature's bounty 
but myself. 

To me they are just a glorious treat, and 
The Philosopher finds me now but an un- 
satisfactory comrade upon his walks ; for 
no sooner has the dear man got into a steady 
swing, and is deep in some illuminating dis- 
quisition, than he finds that I have dropped 
behind. Eve-like, unable to resist the tempta- 
tion of some specially laden bramble of ripe 
berries, mutely imploring me to pick them 
ere they drop ignominiously to earth. Hand- 
kerchiefs and my panama are filled, while 
the walk grows more and more spasmodic, 
and no one less sweet-tempered than The 
Philosopher would endure the constant in- 
terruptions. 

But he, like all good people, has his reward, 
when, at our luncheon, our custard or rice- 
shape is smothered by a crimson mass of 
fragrant, steaming fruit — making a feast 
worthy of the gods ! 



AUTUMN 157 

If only sugar here were not such a pro- 
hibitive price, what a wealth of preserves I 
would make for the winter when fruit is 
scarce, and a varied diet more difficult to 
achieve ! 

As it is, I revel in the present abundance, 
with as little care for the future as the wrathful 
blackbirds in the bushes whose repast I disturb, 
or as the big green lizards who lie as inanimate 
as the branch they cling to, until my eye 
lights upon them, when there is just one sharp, 
lightning movement, and — ^they are not. 



CHAPTER XVII 

CHRISTMAS 

It is the anniversary of the birth of The Christ. 
When I woke this morning the world outside 
my open window was bathed in bright sun- 
shine ; yesterday's wind had hilled ; the little 
waves curled whisperingly, lazily up the shore ; 
a beneficent calm brooded over all things, and 
I lay motionless, entering into the great peace 
of Nature. 

Presently, borne over the pine-covered val- 
leys and hills behind the house, came the deep, 
sonorous tones of the church bell. Too solemn 
and ancient a bell to do aught but toll forth 
its message in stately, measured tones, its 
Gregorian note harmonised with the calm 
radiance of the morning as no merry chimes 
could have done. Its deep, musical vibrations 
penetrated and mingled with the holy quiet, 
the ineffable beauty of the virgin day, without 
disturbing the all-pervading serenity. It bore 

158 



CHRISTMAS 159 

into one's heart the realisation that this day- 
was as no other day of the year ; that this 
was the sacred festival of the anniversary of 
the birth of The Christ, and one's pulses were 
not stirred by it, but rather quietened into 
holy awe. 

For, indeed, the bell proclaimed a great 
mystery, a momentous, world-concerning fact — 
a fact which has been miscomprehended and 
mangled and mixed with falsehood, super- 
stition, and banality as no other fact has been 
since the world began. Words which were 
spiritual, mystical, holy, have been degraded 
into the mud of the grossest material misinter- 
pretation. Behind their presumed authority 
the vilest passions of mankind — jealousy, 
hatred, murder, lust, ambition — all have 
screened themselves in the past, while in the 
present the pure, selfless, gentle figure of The 
Christ is obscured by multiple thicknesses of 
foolish, man-woven webs of doctrine, of ritual, 
of sect, of conventionality and expediency. 

Where does there live a single follower of 
Christianity as Christ preached it ? Where 
can one find a single Christian — that is, a man 
who wholly directs his life by the clear, simple 
rules given by The Christ for the daily conduct 
of His followers ? Who dares affirm that he 



160 A SHADOWED PARADISE ' 

is one ? Modern society could not continue to 
exist if those who fill Christian churches, who 
so glibly mouth the Belief and sip the Wine 
and eat the Bread of Remembrance set them- 
selves honestly and wholly to act according to 
ten of the clearest precepts given by their 
Master for the ordering of their lives. 

As things are, we daintily pick over those 
precepts. Some that are convenient we elect 
to follow and to consider as essentials ; others, 
equally emphatic and vital when they issued 
from the lips of the Great Teacher, we agree 
to ignore, or to so pervert and mingle with 
petty considerations of expediency and self- 
interest, that they are stultified or wholly 
annulled. 

Take, for example, one of the chief est aims 
of our age — the pursuit of wealth. The Great 
Teacher distinctly affirmed, over and over 
again, in words which could not be mistaken, 
that riches were to be avoided, that wealth 
was a sin. We read of no crime for which 
Dives was sent to the Place of Condemnation, 
but that he was a rich man and indifferent to 
the needs of the poor. " Lay not up for 
yourselves treasures on earth." That com- 
mand, literally taken (and where do we find 
authority for taking it otherwise ?) at once 



V CHRISTMAS 161 

condemns our whole modern system of banking 
and investment. So greatly did The Christ 
consider that wealth stood in the way of a 
man's entry into " the kingdom of heaven " 
that He said it would require a miracle for 
him to do so, but, " with God all things are 
possible." The inference, that therefore there 
might be hope — even for your modern mil- 
lionaire. 

The sight of the words I have quoted brings 
back to my memory a quaint, unconscious 
illustration of my point. 

One grey afternoon in England, when the 
rain fell in monotonous streams outside and 
the near distances were hidden by mist which 
there was no wind to disperse. The Philosopher 
and I were amusing ourselves, up in an old 
attic, by turning out an ancient chest of 
family papers which had been stored up there 
out of the way and long forgotten. 

Queer old documents were there, yellow with 
age and damp : leases of property generations 
ago run out and annulled ; deeds of partner- 
ships which had long since been dissolved by 
death ; old legal letters and agreements 
regarding controversies which Time has made 
of no account ; a few family letters, written 
in prim early Victorian phraseology, sand- 

11 



162 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

wiched between worm-eaten ledgers and 
parchments ; and then I happed upon an old 
pocket-book, half diary, half religious calendar, 
with an apt text heading the daily record of 
the year. I examined its fly-leaf ; it had 
belonged to The Philosopher's guardian, a 
martinet of the bad old school, who had made 
my poor man's orphaned boyhood a weariness 
to him, and who had successfully combined 
the strictest religious pretensions with a very 
keen eye to the business of this world. A 
glimpse of human nature has ever greater 
interest to me than the most beautiful ab- 
stractions. I turned the leaves and read out 
stray jottings for the edification of the kneeling 
Philosopher as he groped farther in the chest. 

" ' Sell all that thou hast and give to the 
poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven.' 
. . . Lent John Cartwright £150 at seven per 
cent." 

" ' Set your affections on things above.' . . . 
To-day sent Polly and Grand Turk out to grass. 
Rode Thunderer to Epsom. Rain." 

** * Give to him that asketh of thee and from 
iiim that would borrow of thee turn thou not 
away.' . . . Went to Pinch & Skinner's to- 
day, and arranged to foreclose the mortgage on 
Mary Virtue's property. Very cold weather.'* 



CHRISTMAS . 163 

" ' Love ye your enemies and do good and 
lend, hoping for nothing again.' , , . Renewed 
loan to J. C. for three months from this date 
at ten per cent." 

And so on — ^page after page of the most 
amusing or most tragical inconsistency, accord- 
ing to one's point of view. Indubitably the 
correct, white-haired, respected citizen who 
pencilled the notes was conscious of no 
incongruity nor of any subject for humour. 

• • « • • 

And what a misleading jargon of idolatry 
and superstition has grown up around the 
beautiful, simple personality of The Master ! 

The Great Heart of the World, the im- 
perfectly comprehended Source of All Good, 
selected One of His elder children, One Who, 
nearer to Himself, individualised a greater 
share of His perfection, and sent Him to us 
cruder, more distant children to teach and to 
help us, to explain His and our Father's nature 
and will. His one selfless aim was to reveal 
that gracious mutual Father to our mistaken 
souls. The one prayer He taught us was a 
confident childlike petition to that Father. 

What a number of futile, mistaken pre- 
sumptions He had to persuade us to unlearn ! 
Centuries of misconception, of foolish, childish 



164 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

fearfulness of a terrible bogey whom we had 
set up to scare ourselves. That jealous, 
revengeful God Who must perforce be appeased 
by brutal sacrifice, Who had all power, yet 
Who let His creatures stumble and fall in 
their blindness and then mouthed grimly over 
their destruction was of a nature and a morality 
which we should not tolerate in a fellow-man. 
Reflection must either bring despair or revolt. 

From all this horror of misapprehension 
The Christ drew us gently back to the con- 
ditions of perfect childhood, and revealed to 
us The Source of Being. Whom we name God, 
as a tender, beneficent Father, near to us all 
in perfect understanding of our frailty, de- 
siring nothing from us but love and obedience 
to Himself and kindness and consideration to 
our brethren. He taught us not to fight, 
not to be greedy, to be thoughtful for others' 
comfort in preference to our own, to hasten to 
the assistance of any brother who stumbled 
and hurt himself, to yield to our fellows the 
best things, not rudely to clutch them for 
ourselves, and to be ever meek and gentle, 
unselfish and helpful. 

Simple, simple rules of conduct, such as any 
elder brother might well quote as a wise 
parent's commands to a number of younger 



CHRISTMAS 165 

children going to play together in their Father's 
garden. And, as individuals and as nations, 
how have we obeyed ? Let the intervening 
centuries, with their dark record of hatred, 
bloodship, lust, and greed, make answer. 

Thus our conduct ; and how grotesque in 
foolishness have been our methods of com- 
munication with that Father " in Whom we 
live and move and have our being." Because 
the temporary veil of flesh hid Him we doubted 
whether He was within earshot of the voice of 
our soul ; so we began to entreat that dear 
Elder Brother to speak to Him for us. Soon, 
growing more timorous, and forgetting our 
Brother's kindly, simple nature, many of us 
besought His earthly mother to convey our 
wishes to Him ; and, later, drifting still farther 
from the fearless straightforwardness of the 
child, we selected those among us whom we 
considered our best models of good behaviour, 
and requested them to beseech The Virgin to 
intercede with The Son to entreat The Father ! 
Then, forsooth, we came to fear that, even 
with all this mediation. Our Father might not 
care to hear His children speaking out their 
hearts to Him in their own spontaneous, 
natural way ; so set little phrases of supplica- 
tion were composed, to be reiterated over and 



166 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

over again until they became a meaningless 
patter, requiring no thought nor effort of the 
soul, with long invocations which gradually 
Jiynoptised away all sense of personal converse 
with a real, vital, present, listening Father. 

So, farther and farther have we strayed 
from the grand simplicity of the Christ-message 
until surely we need a fresh Christ to come to 
turn us, volte-face, back into the old plain 
paths, to the attitude of little children again 
at the feet of a loving, understanding Father. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

FAREWELL ! 

The year has ended and the days are growing- 
few now. Time's thread is wearing very thin, 
as I turn to this last unwritten sheet. I must 
not wait to write more, but must fasten 
the loose papers together, and have done* 
with it. 

My fingers move lingeringly about the 
little pile, reluctant to finish my task. What 
a queer little book it makes ! An inconsequent 
medley of thought and observation, of memories 
and simple happenings. Yet inasmuch as it 
is made up of true pages torn from the Book 
of Life, it may perhaps have interest for 
some. I wonder whether it will ! 

At any rate it has been a solace to me to 
write it, and from behind my veil of anonymity,, 
here, during these last days in my " Walden,'* 
to take the world into my confidence and to 
tell it what I pleased. Whatever happens, I 

167 



168 A SHADOWED PARADISE 

shall have said my say. But the end has come 
now. 

Go thou then, little book, that has been my 
recreation and pleasure throughout these last 
sweet, sad months. Even as Noah sent out 
the dove from the Ark, so I send you forth 
across the wide waters into the great Un- 
known, to see, perchance, if there is any olive- 
leaf of hope with which you may return to 
me. Go, and may all beneficent influences 
speed thy quest ! 



JPrinted by Bazell, Watson <Sc Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury. 



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